


I Will Follow

by KathSilver



Series: Call My Name [2]
Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: 11!Verse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Can’t keep their hands to themselves, Chuck is a genius little shit, Eventual Smut, Explosions, Feelings, Fix-It, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Jealousy, M/M, Mutual Pining, Newt POV, Original Character(s), PTSD, Plans Change, Slow Burn, Strangling, Telepathy, Time Travel, because they have to, dont mind me as I take canon out back and shoot it, gratuitous use of my own headcanon, harriet has a gun fetish, i make puns, interruptions, miyoko, suffocation, thomas pov, use your words thomas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 08:21:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 59,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14016165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathSilver/pseuds/KathSilver
Summary: They've gotten out of the Maze and so far their plan appears to be working. They've suffered far less casualties than before, now all they have to do is follow the plan and Newt and Thomas should be able to skip the mistakes they'd made the first time around. But no one can follow a plan to save their lives, quite a few things go wrong, and Janson proves to be far more resourceful than they'd originally believed.**This is the sequel to Where You Lead and it will not make any kind of sense if you haven't read it yet.





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> HI THERE!
> 
> Thanks so much for deciding to continue on with me for this story, I can't wait to share it with you. One warning though-- if you've come here wanting to see the plot of the movies and the books? You're in the wrong spot. In a few chapters I essentially take the plot that James and Wes gave us, set it on fire, drop the ashes in acid, and bury the whole mess in a dumpster. 
> 
> Call me Icarus, but damn it I can do better.

Despite all of the memories chasing themselves in circles around Thomas’s brain, Thomas was surprisingly calm and soon sleep overpowered him. Darkness settled on his world, drowning out the hum of the Berg and the whispers of the boys around him. Somehow their positions had switched around so that is was Thomas who was snuggled into Newt’s side, with his arms wrapped securely around Thomas and holding him close. He could tell by Newt’s breathing that he was still awake, but the steady - _thump thump_ \- of his heart against Thomas’s ear was enough to let Thomas relax into sleep.

He had no concept of time passing while in that state. Half asleep, half enjoying Newt’s presence and the thought that they’d managed to escape the first set of trials. That they’d have the chance to get everything done right this time.

Blissful sleep. Hazy darkness. Warmth. A physical glow. Almost floating.

The world seemed to fade away. All became numb and sweet. And the darkness, somehow comforting. He slipped into a dream.

 

He’s very young. Four, maybe? Five? Lying in a bed with blankets pulled to his chin.

A woman sits next to him, her hands folded in her lap. She has long brown hair, a face just beginning to show signs of age. Her eyes are sad. He knows that even though she’s trying very hard to hide it with a smile.

He wants to say something, ask her a question. But he can’t. He’s not really here. Just witnessing it all from a place he doesn’t quite understand. She begins to talk, a sound so simultaneously sweet and angry it disturbs him.

“I don’t know why they chose you, but I do know this. You’re special somehow. Never forget that. And never forget how much”—her voice cracks and tears run down her face—“never forget how much I love you.”

The boy replies, but it’s not really Thomas speaking. Even though it _is_ him. None of it makes sense. “Are you gonna be crazy like all those people on TV, Mommy? Like…Daddy?”

The woman reaches out and runs her fingers through his hair. Woman? No, he can’t call her that. This is his mother.

“Don’t you worry about that, honey,” she says. “You won’t be here to see it.”

Her smile has gone away.

 

“Tommy. Tommy, wake up, we’re about to land.”

Newt was rubbing small circles on his back to try and wake him up, but it was having the opposite effect. The soothing motion threatened to tug Thomas back into his dream and Newt chuckled above him. The motion stopped, and Thomas grumbled at the loss, but he pushed himself up form where he lay and blearily blinked out at the world around him.

Newt’s face come into focus first and the boy was smiling at him; a soft, pure thing. Thomas missed his warmth and he hated that the smile would be forced to vanish soon. Emotion stirred, strong and powerful, and had their setting been different Thomas would have been tempted to say something. But they were not alone and, as was becoming the theme, this was not the time.

Thomas stretched and felt his spine crack a few times before he settled back against the wall of the Berg and nodded at the others. Either Newt had glared them all into submission or there was too much going on for them to care, but not a single person had made a comment about Thomas’s sleeping arrangements. However, once Thomas clocked movement to his right and discovered the source he realized it might be for a different reason entirely.

Ben had awoken at some point and was rocking back and forth slowly, hugging his knees. Thomas didn’t know what to say. He grabbed the coat that he’d been using as a blanket and draped it over Ben’s shoulders to ease off his shivers. Ben’s rocking stopped, and he sat back to look at Thomas with bleak, tired eyes that were surprisingly dry given the circumstances.

“He said that if we told you the plan that you’d stop him. That you’d risk not having a backup plan and make him come with us.”

Ben’s voice was dull and roughened by sleep and his screams. “He’s right, I would have.”

“You’d be an idiot, then. From what he told me. That’s why I agreed. After he got all the details from you he came to me and said what he thought we should do, to make sure we had a way into the City.” Ben said. He rested his chin on his knees and stared blankly down at the dirt engrained into the steel floor.

Thomas wasn’t sure what was happening here, what he was supposed to do. It sounded more like Ben was trying to convince himself that he’d done the right thing instead of trying to convince Thomas. Now would probably be a bad time to point out all the various ways that it could go wrong, and that since they knew the tunnel existed already the only thing Gally had done was make sure they wouldn’t have to fight anyone for access to it. The deadline of three months ticked in his head, but at least he had the small assurance that Gally would be picked up and relatively safe for a while.

“You sacrificed a great deal for us all, I won’t forget it.” Newt said softly. Every Glader in the Berg murmured some variation of the same thing and it seemed to put a little bit of life back into Ben’s eyes. It would be okay, they would _make it_ be okay.

The loud hum of the engines was the only reason Thomas had allowed the conversation to go on for this long, but it was slowly starting to quiet down as they prepared for descent. They couldn’t afford to be overheard, not when so much was riding on them being five steps ahead of WCKD and WCKD assuming they were eight steps behind. When it looked like someone was about to continue that line of conversation, Thomas met their eyes and shook his head and tapped his ear—they understood.

“You ready for Phase Two, Tommy?” Newt whispered.

Thomas turned his head to meet eyes full of mischief and determination, and his favorite smirk.

It was time for revenge.


	2. Separate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gladers: 1, WCKD: 0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad so many of you are excited to see where this story goes! I can't wait to share it all with you :) As always, thanks for all the love.

Newt hadn’t had enough time to get accustomed to the loss of Tommy sleeping on top of him completely before the doors of the Berg were ripped open and the sounds of gunfire and wind and screaming began. Then again, it was entirely possible that Newt would never be used to that particular loss.

Thomas reached out and pulled Newt to his feet and Newt couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if he’d woken Thomas up when the rest of them had been asleep. If he’d imagined that gleam in his eyes, the stutter in his breathing. It couldn’t all be in his head, could it? Or was it just that his desperate hope was projecting things onto his best friend that weren’t actually there? The screams from the swarm of charging Cranks ensured that Newt didn’t have long to depress himself over the notion.

Running on sand was just as difficult as Newt remembered. Ben and Alby stumbled as they ran next to him, and up in front Teresa fell flat on her face before Thomas bent down to help her up. He fought down his bitterness at the sight. Thomas’s had given the sign that she wasn’t to be trusted, that _had_ to mean something, right?

“Go! Go! Go! They’re coming!”

Newt didn’t see who had screamed it, but the violent screeches were growing ever closer and he had to fight the urge to vomit. He’d once made those sounds, been as far gone as they were. Against his better judgement he turned his head to look at the oncoming swarm, and the nausea in Newt’s gut churned more forcefully. That was him. That was what he’d looked like—poisonous green veins, black goo pouring from his mouth, skin inflamed, and face twisted in an unrelenting violence.

There was no way to mask his horror at the sight and his leg buckled.

“C’mon, shank. Ain’t you no more, c’mon let’s go,” Alby muttered into Newt’s ear, close now since he’d caught Newt from crashing to the ground.

Newt gasped and nodded and kept on running. The wind ripped through their clothes and their ankles sunk into the sand, but there was no hiding the sheer number of boys pouring the from the Berg. It was enough to have their own little army and Newt couldn’t help but think that the sight looked a lot like victory.

Still tasted like sand, though.

The cranks were gaining on them and the sound of bullets assailed their ears from every direction but forward—and then they were in. The Gladers all around him looked at the Loading Bay in wonder and awe; it took Newt a moment for him to remember that he should be doing that as well. It looked exactly the same as it had the day they’d escaped, still smelled like motor oil and gasoline and old sweat. But the people were clean and their clothes in good repair and they all seemed happy. Safe. It was nothing more than a beautiful lie.

“No!”

“Get off of me!”

“Don’t you touch him!”

“ _Minho!”_

Newt ran in the direction of the cries, and when he broke through the crowd with Alby hot on his heels it was to find Clint, Jeff, and Thomas fighting away the people who were trying to take Minho away. They looked like doctors which, considering they were WCKD, was not a point in their favor. Flashbacks to Minho being dragged away by soldiers and beaten into submission took over Newt’s vision and before he knew it he was right next to Thomas and pushing the doctors away.

“Boys! Calm down—”

“I’m a doctor, he is _bleeding_!”

“Everybody, stop!”

Newt’s head snapped up at the voice, and the tone. It was Janson. Janson who’d shot Thomas, who’d ruined them all, who’d—

No.

Not yet.

It hadn’t happened yet.

Focus.

“What is the meaning of this?” Janson demanded. “We’ve a swarm outside, we don’t have time for this, get them to a safe location!”

He looked much the same as ever, with his beady eyes and rat-like appearance. His hair was neater than it had been the last time Newt had seen it, granted he’d about to jump fifteen stories into a pool and the state of Janson’s appearance hadn’t been his top priority, but it was easy to see that this was a man who still thought he was in control. Newt would enjoy wiping that look off of his face, when the time came.

“Sir, one of them is severely injured, we need to give him treatment!”

Newt cut his eyes over to the speaker; it was the doctor who’d worked on Teresa the first time they’d come through. The woman with dark skin and hard eyes. She was gesturing at the ground where Minho was very clearly leaving a blood trail with ever step he’d taken. The sight made Newt’s heartbeat quicken in fear and he met Thomas’s eyes in panic. What do they do? Clearly, they couldn’t trust WCKD because they knew the truth, but how else do they keep Minho from dying?

“Good god! Get this poor boy to medical immediately! Which Berg was he on and why did the medical officer on board do nothing?” Janson asked with fire in his eyes, attempting to be their hero. “No, never mind, not important, just see to him now.”

Again the doctors made to grab for Minho, and again the Gladers formed a solid wall blocking them.

“Boys…” Janson said. His hands were held out placatingly, but his eyes were too cold to sell it. Gunfire and screams still echoed from outside and there was movement all around them as troops got into position or ran to help fight off the swarm. Newt made sure to remember where it was they kept their sand mobiles—those could come in handy later, if necessary. It was Jeff who broke the silence.

“We go with him. He doesn’t go alone. Ever.”

Jeff threw the words down like a gauntlet and dared Janson to defy him. They’d all been told, every last Glader, what had happened to Minho originally. And every last one of them had made a vow to never let it happen again.

“Now, that’s just—” Janson began, but he was interrupted by Clint.

“And we switch out, every 3 hours. Two of us are always with him and we switch out constantly, so all three of us don’t just go missing suddenly and you can’t pull anything.”

There was no stopping the rush of pride Newt felt for his friends, or Janson’s irritation with them. But what could he do? His people needed to fight off the Cranks, stop Minho’s bleeding, and take care of the massive number of Gladers all without breaking their disguise as rescuers.

Janson blew out sharply through his nose. “Who is your leader?”

Before Thomas or Newt had the chance to move or speak, a deep voice to his left rang out loud and true. “I am.” Said Alby as he stood out in front of the wall of Gladers protecting Minho. “Name’s Alby. There some reason you don’t like our deal? Not the most trusting of new shanks, us. Not with where we come from.”

The Gladers nodded in unison and somehow managed to tighten up their ranks without moving an inch. Newt watched Janson closely as he scanned the crowd and saw that the man was reevaluating his entire plan.

“Of course not, Mr. Alby,” Janson crooned. “I simply didn’t wish for anyone to be on their feet that didn’t have to be.”

“We’re used to it.” Alby’s voice didn’t waver, and it gave no quarter. It made Newt stand taller to hear it.

“Very well then, you three to the medical bay and the rest of you please get to safety. We cannot guarantee that our doors will hold.”

Liar.

But they did as they were told; Clint and Jeff held Minho upright between them and Minho met Newt’s gaze and nodded in confidence. He would be okay.

It didn’t stop Newt’s anxiety from going through the roof, however. Someone came to lead them away to safety and Newt felt two small taps against his knuckles.

‘ _I’m with you_ ’ it meant.

The acknowledgement from Thomas calmed him some. They had time before things would get messed up, a few days at least. Besides, it wasn’t as though they didn’t know how to break into and out of the medical bay. Minho would be fine.

They’d all be fine.

 

 

“Please, please for the love of god tell me that food is safe to eat,” Frypan begged.

Newt was amazed. The room they’d been led to was almost triple in size to the one they’d visited before, with triple the amount of food spread across the tabletops. Roast chicken, fresh vegetables, steaming rolls and bowls of rice; cookies, cakes, juice and ice-cold water. Jams and jellies, wings and ham, steaks and roasted potatoes. The scent was even more mouthwatering this time than it was before, yet not a single boy moved forward towards it, not even Chuckie. They all waited for the okay—even Teresa, though Newt was sure that was more because she was freshly awoken and bloody confused. This was technically only her second day out of the Box, most people were still dizzy and unable to function well at that point.

“Yeah, guys. The food is safe enough, just don’t eat too much of it alright? Your stomach will thank you later,” Thomas said. Newt chuckled at the memory—all of them laid out on the chairs, tables, and floor because they’re so stuffed that they couldn’t move. It was a beautiful memory.

“I call dibs on the rice!”

“Give me the chicken!”

“Matt, pass the cookies!”

Newt wanted to join in on the food and fun but he held himself back, watching. Taking it all in. There were so many more of them now than there was then; it was amazing, yes, but it also raised the stakes. The more people they had, the harder it would be to keep them all alive.

“You worried about Minho?” Alby asked.

“I’m always worried about Minho, as is anyone with good sense.” Newt replied.

“He’ll be alright, we got watch on him. Eat up!”

Once again Newt scanned the room and committed the image of them all happy and together, mostly, to memory; until he reached Thomas and Teresa sitting next to each other and tucking in. The looks on their faces made it clear that they were speaking to each other mind to mind, and Newt understood. He did. She woke up in a strange place, surrounded by boys, then immediately was in a fight to the death and was now in yet _another_ new place, and she had to have questions. He didn’t blame her, for that.

Newt even understood that the mental link between them was probably the only thing keeping her going through that insanity, that Thomas was her lifeline. It all made perfect sense. Regardless of his feelings towards the Teresa he knew she would become, the bitch that would betray them all and cause the death of so many until Newt could stop it, at that moment she was just a scared girl clinging to the only thing she felt she had going for her.

No, what upset Newt was that the only thing she had going for her was _Thomas_. And that despite everything Teresa had done, how many times she’d betrayed them and how severe the consequences were, there was Thomas. Sitting next to her, comforting her mind to mind, and likely falling in love with her all over again.

The heat that had lingered on Newt’s skin from where Thomas curled up to sleep against him evaporated, and suddenly Newt felt very alone.

 

Zart and Fynn were next to replace Clint and Jeff, who returned to say that nothing had happened other than them taking Minho to surgery and patching up his hip—the doctors had even let them watch and explained the process to them once the med-jacks explained that they were the closest things to doctors the Glade had had. Anything they learned would be useful, and they planned on guarding Minho as often as possible so they could learn as much as they could—and steal more medical supplies from them than they just did.

Discreetly they divided the new supply of bandages and antiseptic around the packs while Clint and Jeff caught up on eating from the plates that had been saved for them.

Teresa stills tuck so close to Thomas that Newt wanted to scream at him for letting her, but at least Thomas looked like he was getting a headache. Newt was ashamed of himself for the thought, but the coil of inky bitterness within his heart wouldn’t take back the sentiment.

Soon, Janson appeared and took them on their tour of the Facility, ‘explaining’ who they were and what they did there. A bucket of lies, one after the other, but they pretended to eat it up. Especially Chuck, who’d decided to try to use his childhood innocence to try and make these bastards feel as guilty as possible about what they were doing; if they even had hearts to feel guilt, that was.

The showers were brilliant and the new clothes a welcome addition—the absence of Teresa an even better one—but the surprise came when it was time for them to go to get a night of rest. Tomorrow would be their rounds of medical and their introduction to the Facility population, but tonight they were supposed to curl up in real beds and truly feel ‘safe’.

Except they didn’t have any dormitories large enough to house 42 boys together, they would have to be divided.

This wasn’t safe, it wasn’t secure, they couldn’t guarantee anything if they were all apart, but there was no way around it.

“Each Keeper, take your boys,” Alby decided. “I’ll go with the Builders since Gally…”

Ben flinched from where he stood at Thomas’s left side, and Newt watched as Thomas lifted his arm to pat him on the back in comfort. There was comradery there of shared experience’s that Newt understood and he was happy that they could make each other feel a little less alone.

“Thomas? You’ll take the Runners like you have been, and Newt you go with him to make sure that he doesn’t do anything stupid. Dunno why you shanks elected a Greenie as Keeper anyway, whackers.”

Newt narrowed his eyes at Alby, he hadn’t missed the glint of mischief in them, but he could hardly contain his relief. Being separated from Thomas, while technically smarter because then their information was more spread out, was not something that Newt wanted to think of at all. Not after everything. They only time they’d ever been separated for more than an hour was when Newt died—and he wasn’t looking to beat that record anytime soon.

“Technically we didn’t,” Winston said. Newt snorted and started to make his way over towards where the Runners all stood. Two taps of his knuckles to let Thomas know where he was later and he was settled in, flanking Thomas on his right side, where he always stood when Thomas took the lead.

“Not now, Winston. We didn’t _not_ elect him either, just go to bed,” Frypan sighed. “Standard watch, Alby?”

“One man up, and I want each man to check in with the other rooms every hour. Just pop your heads out the door, no need for nothin’ fancy,” Alby explained, but he was interrupted by Janson.

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, gentlemen. The doors will seal behind you for your protection and won’t open until morning unless there’s an emergency.” Janson said.

Alby gave him his blankest stare. “Then we ain’t goin’ in those rooms.”

Newt smirked, Janson had no idea what he was dealing with. “You’re not a very trusting group, are you?” Janson asked. It was clear he was trying to make the question off like a joke and inviting them all to share the laugh, but Alby was having none of it.

“Would you be?”

The color rose high on Janson’s cheeks, Newt recognized it as the start of his temper.

“You _will_ go into those rooms and—”

“So, the doors won’t be locked?”

“Yes, they will be, but—”

“Then we sleep in the hall.”

“You can’t just _sleep_ —”

“We’ve slept worse places. Have you? Or you spend your whole life on a bed behind a locked door?”

Janson’s eye actually twitched, and although the Gladers were thoroughly enjoying the showdown, Newt was starting to be a little concerned for his friend. The last time Janson had gotten irritated with them at the Facility, he bumped them to the front of the line to be drained. It was time to deescalate the situation, if possible. Newt reached out and pressed two fingers on the inside of Thomas’s wrist, and then Thomas stepped forward and spoke.

“Alby, come on man. I know you want a bed as bad as the rest of us. How about a compromise?” Thomas asked.

Janson and Alby both raised an eyebrow.

“You’ve got to open at least one door every three hours for when Minho’s guards swap out, right? So how about when that happens you just temporarily unlock them all, our people on watch can check in while Minho’s guards swap out, and then you can lock them right back up. Sound fair?”

Newt was impressed. He’d no idea what it was Thomas would come up with on the fly but that actually didn’t sound half bad. He must have been thinking about it ever since the terms of Minho’s release to the medical bay had been discussed, while Newt had been too occupied thinking about… other things. He needed to get his priorities sorted or else they’d be forced to rely on Thomas entirely.

Alby nodded. “I can live with that. Good that, Janson?”

“Good… that?” Janson asked in confusion, but Alby deliberately misunderstood the tone.

“Glad we could agree on somethin’,” Alby said. He put out his hand to shake on it right when Janson realized what had happened. Now it was either go back on his word and thus make himself seem like a bad guy and not gain their trust, or to go along with the plan.

Score one for the Gladers.

 

 

“I’m nervous about us all being so spread out,” Thomas whispered to Newt later that night. Newt didn’t waste time wondering on how Thomas had known he was still awake—they’d long since had each other’s breathing patterns memorized. “Too many ways it can go wrong.”

“Did you check that the vents unlocked still?” Newt asked from one bunk over. Since the Runners were a smaller group they’d been put in a room with a slightly different layout that where they’d stayed before. It only had two sets of bunkbeds and then two individual beds quite close together on the far side of the room, those were the two that Newt and Thomas had chosen. It was less likely their nightmares would wake the others, that way.

“It is, all good there. I’m just nervous. So much can still go wrong, and the more of us there are…” Thomas said. He was echoing the very thought Newt had had earlier in the day.

He tried very hard to ignore the pang in his chest wondering at what it would be like if Thomas’s mind was linked to his instead of Teresa’s, how much easier their lives would be if they could read each other’s thoughts for real.

“…The harder to keep them all alive. I know, Tommy. I know.”

At a loss for what to say, Newt reached out to Thomas’s bed and gave a _tap tap_ to his knuckles. They might not be able to speak mind to mind, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have their own language. Newt finally fell asleep when Ben took watch, and Thomas’s breathing evened out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who didn’t notice, there is now a fourth part of this series that will hold drabbles and one shots from this universe that don’t get shown in the main story. The one that is up right now is of Ben and Gally’s first kiss. 
> 
> If you wanna read something less fun, check out Crumpled Papers and Burned Pages. Not in this universe but guaranteed to make you cry. 
> 
> And Splinter? Don’t read Splinter at work, that’s all I’m saying. 
> 
> Enjoy!  
> (Please read the benally one and become benally trash like me. Please please.)


	3. Needle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kids say the darnedest things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things to keep in mind for this chapter:
> 
> 1\. Aris and Rachel both canonically have the ability to speak mind to mind with Thomas and Teresa.  
> 2\. Rachel was the girl hanging at the facility that Thomas was worried was Teresa in the movie.  
> 3\. I'm making my own timeline here, I don't care that canonically if the boys escaped the Maze as early as they did, Group B should still be in it. We are in Kath!Verse now folks, I make my own rules.
> 
> Enjoy!

Morning came too soon just as is always did, but it came on the heels of the best night of sleep Thomas could remember having in a very long time. Ben was the one who gently shook both Thomas and Newt awake, first to rise though he’d been last to fall asleep. Despite this the boy still looked better than he had, as though the more time passed the surer he was becoming of his decision.

Thomas was glad, and he swore to reunite Ben and Gally as soon as was possible.

A soft grumbling to his right made Thomas smile. Newt was impossible to see on his bed because he’d completely cocooned himself inside his blankets and judging by the noises coming from the wriggling lump he had no intentions of leaving his nest anytime soon. Ben stared at the mess of blankets with a childish sort of joy that was a wonder to behold.

“Newt… doesn’t do this. He’s the first one awake, always.” Ben whispered.

Thomas let his smile grow as he thought about a few mornings while they planned to rescue Minho; Thomas would search the entire camp looking for Newt, only to find that he was curled up into a little burrito inside his blankets and was sleeping through the racket of Thomas calling out his name. Those were the best, because by the time Newt would fight himself free to see what all the fuss was about his hair would be sticking all over from the static.

“Yeah, he does,” Thomas replied softly. “But only on special occasions.”

Never often enough.

Ben poked at Newt several more times and Dmitri and Justin soon joined in to help. They looked far too pleased at this new side of their Second in Command for Thomas to interfere, and—

 _Thomas?_ Teresa asked.

Thomas turned away from where Newt was finally emerging out of the blankets, complete with bedhead, because he didn’t want that image and this voice to overlap.

 _Morning._ Thomas replied.

_I… I think they’re about to take out my transmitter._

Shit. So soon? Thomas had barely had any time to do much to try and sway her to their cause, something he wasn’t even sure he wanted to do in the first place, but something he felt he _had_ to try. Constantly the image of a sobbing Teresa helping him get to the Berg, giving them the cure, and then letting herself die because she’d felt she deserved it…

It made Thomas believe that there was room for remorse within her, room for her to change. He couldn’t blame this version of her for crimes that hadn’t happened yet.

 _Are you afraid?_ Thomas asked.

_A little. I don’t know what’s going to happen anymore. You’re my best friend._

She sounded sad, and it gave Thomas hope.

 _I haven’t had time to explain things to you, to plead my case, but I want to. I don’t want us to be on opposite sides, Teresa._ He allowed her to feel the truth in his words, how melancholy the idea of fighting her again made him.

_Then tell me, you’ve got a bit of time, I haven’t even changed to a gown yet._

So, he did. Nothing about the time-travel or their future plan, just the truths about every Glader. Their life. What they wanted. How he understood about Teresa’s mother, and he admired her drive to try and save the world, but what if she was wrong? What if they took every immune they could fine, drained them all, and they still had no cure? Then the world would have no future at all.

He didn’t mention the real cure, but he’d done all he could. And he waited. As he sat there with his eyes closed and fists wrapped around his knees, Thomas felt the bed next to him dip down with someone’s weight. Not a moment later he felt two fingers press a solid line down Thomas’s forearm; Newt. _Everything okay?_

Thomas fumbled until he found Newt’s wrist and pushed his fingers into his pulse in a mirror of the motion that Newt had done to Thomas the day before. _Take charge._

- _Tap tap_ \- on the back of Thomas’s knuckles and then the weight on his bed was gone.

“Alrigh’ ya lugs,” Newt said. “Start freshnin’ up, gotta long day ahead.”

Once more Thomas tuned out his surroundings to focus on his bond with Teresa, but it was nearly impossible to figure out what it was she felt.

 _They’re about to do it,_ she finally said. _I’m afraid for you, Thomas._

For ‘him’, not ‘us’. She had made her decision already, then. Even if she didn’t know it.

 _I don’t know where I stand,_ she continued. _But I won’t tell them you remember, Tom. I swear. Please be careful?_

_Teresa—_

But she was gone.

 

 

Thomas looked for her in the lab, but the curtained off area that had once belonged to Teresa now belonged to Minho and his two guards, Justin and Jeff at the moment. Thomas made a beeline for Minho, Newt and Alby hot on his heels.

“Ayyyy!” Minho grinned.

Thomas stopped short.

“He’s on so many painkillers that earlier he was talking about smelling colors, don’t worry about it,” Justin assured them all.

“You good, Min?” Newt asked as he made to approach the bed, but they never got the chance. A herd of Doctors emerged from one of the doorways and herded the Gladers to the opposite side of the room.

“Good morning, gentlemen. I trust you slept well?” Janson. He’d come in with them because of course he had.

Thomas wasn’t sure what exactly to do about Janson other than to lie low and try not to catch his attention too much. He’d always been far too perceptive and Thomas honestly wouldn’t feel comfortable about any part of their plan until they’d left the man far behind. Preferably dead. Looking at him was far too difficult a task without envisioning the way he’d looked when he crowed his victory over Newt’s death. Ava’s death. Attempting to send Thomas to the underworld with them, and Thomas trying to let him. But it wasn’t like that anymore.

Now he had a reason to stay.

Instead Thomas chose to take the gift that Alby had given him when he’d stepped up as their Leader and would only directly interfere when it was necessary. Or when Newt told him to. They still hadn’t swapped roles back since that morning and he assumed that either Newt was trying to give him a break from making decisions, or that Newt knew he’d spent the morning speaking to Teresa and didn’t trust his judgement. It could’ve been either.

“Never better,” Newt said sweetly, but his knuckles were clenched so hard they were white.

“Excellent. This morning we’re going to put you through a couple of tests, just to check your overall health, you understand. You’ve all been living in terrible conditions for far too long, we just want to make sure you’re going to be alright.” Janson explained.

The Gladers all nodded, then been warned of this, and no one made a move against it. When there was no uprising Thomas could see a bit of the tension leave Janson’s shoulders.

“Mr. Alby if you’ll follow me? The rest of you please spread out among the stations to be looked at.”

Janson’s request was met with silence and stillness—no one was to go anywhere alone. No one. Not even Alby. Thomas couldn’t help but feel pleasure at the image of Janson rolling his eyes and clearly begging for patience.

“Right, forgive me Mr. Alby and one other, if you’ll be so kind?”

Alby nodded to Frypan and the two of them left to follow Janson; Thomas wandered over to the treadmill he’d seen Minho run on last time and was about to have the man operating it connect the little white sucker things to his chest when there was a disturbance from the other side of the room.

“No! Don’t!”

It was Clint.

Thomas whipped around quickly and ran to the source of commotion—Newt was seated in a chair, paralyzed in fear, because he’d just sat where they’d clearly had every intention of drawing his blood to determine what nutrients he was running short on.

Fuck.

Thomas had overlooked that.

All it would take was one overzealous medic looking too closely at Newt’s blood, at Winston’s blood, and the whole jig would be up. WCKD was well aware that those two, and supposedly others, were not immune but if their blood was tested for any reason it could reveal that now, suddenly, they _were_.

Everybody was frozen, the doctors were looking suspicious, and Newt’s eyes sought out Thomas’s in the crowd, brown eyes blown wide with fear. Clint, and thank god for that boy for paying attention when Thomas hadn’t been, had only bought them a few moments but there was no way to explain all of this away. No valid reason that Thomas could think of, anyway.

“We don’t like needles,” muttered a voice that had never sounded so small and pathetic any of the many, _many_ times Thomas had ever heard it speak.

Chuck moved through the group of boys slowly, with his eyes fixed on the ground, until he was the sole focus of every doctor in that room. First the first time since Thomas had known him, Chuck actually looked his age.

“Why would you _all_ be afraid of needles?” A snobby looking doctor with a high, blonde ponytail asked.

Good question, where exactly was Chuck going with this? Thomas again looked to Newt, who managed to shrug with his eyes only, before fixing back on the curly haired kid in the front of the room.

Chuck shuffled on his feet and bit and refused to meet the doctor’s eyes, addressing his words to the floor. “We called them Grievers.”

Understanding punched Thomas in the face with its suddenness; Chuck was a shucking genius.

“You called… what… Grievers?” the medic working Thomas’s station asked.

As one every Glader in that room clearly made an effort to appear small and innocent and afraid, but it didn’t matter because all eyes were still focused completely on Chuckie.

“The Monsters. They would attack us, they kept us trapped in the Glade, we were too afraid to leave,” Chuck whispered, and Thomas thought he might have heard a quiver in his voice. “They were horrible. Taller than you could imagine, part animal and part machine. They had so many arms it felt like they could grab us all and rips us into pieces so tiny we’d be nothing more than red spray left on the ground. Or, well, that’s all we ever found of most of the boys they took. But that wasn’t the worst part.”

Chuck’s voice was _definitely trembling_ and Thomas watched in awe as he finally looked up at the doctors with huge, wet eyes that made even Thomas want to run over and give him a hug.

“Some of their arms were these awful gun looking things with needles as long as your leg, and if they couldn’t grab you and run off? They’d stab you with it.” Tears were totally falling down Chuck’s cheeks, and Thomas had to wonder if any of what was showing was real. “What those needles did to us was so much worse. They’d inject us with this evil thing that made every nerve feel like it was on fire and put nightmares in our hears and it turned out veins black and acid green and the screaming would… it would go on for days. And no one was ever the same, if they recovered.”

“We had to fight them, the Grievers, in order to escape,” Doug whispered in horror. “Not all of us made it.”

James had been one of his friends, Thomas remembered. Chuck might have started this to save all of their dumb asses but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real. Thomas looked for Ben but he couldn’t see him from this angle, and it looked like Chuck was gearing up for his grand finale.

“It was only yesterday. We’ve got time, right? We can- we can relax and then come back to this later? Y-you won’t put us through that, right? I mean you saved us… please don’t make us feel afraid again?”

Chuck was full on sobbing at this point and Thomas held his breath in anticipation, hoping like hell it worked—

The head doctor was drying her eyes and nodding. “We have time. No needles, not for a few days at least, we can give you that much.” She assured them before leaving the room to hide her own sniffles.

It worked.

Thomas was still slightly concerned about Chuck before the kid turned his back on the doctors, looked for Thomas in the crowd, and fucking _winked_.

That amazing little shit had faked the whole shucking thing and saved them all from being found out.

 

The rest of their medical exam went smoothly, though the Gladers had to be extra careful to still appear shaken up, and someone had to explain to Alby and Frypan what had gone down while they were away for their little interview with Janson. But Newt was still in charge, all Thomas needed to do was keep his head down and prepare for the cafeteria, where he would be initiating contact with Aris.

Walking into the cafeteria, it was overwhelming to see the number of immunes there. So many that they hadn’t managed to save. Thomas recognized some of them from somewhere, probably either the raid on the Last City or they were on the train care they’d stolen, and all of them here and alive. Ready to be saved again if they could manage it.

Newt was sticking close to Thomas’s side to help guide him, he knew that the moment Thomas started speaking telepathically with someone all bets were off as to whether or not he’d be able to manage walking without falling flat on his face, let alone knocking into a table. Thomas snapped his fingers and them clapped them into a fist—a seemingly restless gesture, but to Newt it meant to be on his guard. Immediately Newt took a step further into Thomas’s space, but no one seemed to notice. Thomas relished the warmth and the contact for only a moment before his eyes found his target; Aris sat by himself at the end of his usual table, staring down at his plate of food.

 _Hello Aris,_ Thomas sent out to him. He was rewarded by Aris jumping nearly a foot into the air and looking around the cafeteria like a madman for the source. _Calm down, I’m on your side. I’m up here at the front next to the tall blond guy. In a second, I’m gonna reach up and scratch my face._

Thomas went for the scratch, and locked eyes with Aris, while Newt narrowly navigated him away from knocking into a trash can. _There, you see me?_

 _Who are you?_ Aris asked. _How do you know my name?_

_Okay see, so this is where you’re going to have to use your imagination okay? My story isn’t easy to believe. Name’s Thomas, and I’m kind of from the future._

Aris rolled his eyes and started to glare at him. Thomas had to fight back his frustration.

_Seriously? You come from a place with flying bat things, a bunch of girls, and you’re speaking telepathically to me right this very second but **time travel** is where you draw the line?_

Aris raised his eyebrows and nodded his head a bit, because, yes, Thomas did have a bit of a point thank you very much. The lives they lived were completely ridiculous enough for this to all be plausible. He was about to keep explaining when a pale girl with long, dark hair sat down next to him. Thomas recognized her and stopped dead in his tracks. Across the cafeteria Janson and a bunch of guards entered, with Janson holding the clipboard of names he would call to their deaths.

_Aris, is that Rachel? Tell me is that Rachel who just sat down next to you?_

_What the—_

_Tell her to cough. Start coughing. Anything. Or, wait, she can hear me too, right?_

Thomas was started to panic and he could feel that Newt had a death grip on his arm, but none of that mattered. They must have gotten here early enough that Rachel hadn’t been called yet, but if something didn’t happen soon Thomas was willing to bet everything he had that her name was on that list.

_RACHEL!_

The girl in question jumped, looked at Aris, and then immediately her eyes zeroed in on Thomas.

_Who the hell are you._

_The guy trying to save your life. Those names he calls? They go to **die** do you understand? And you name is on that list._

There was a moment of silence while Rachel looked back at Aris, Thomas assumed he was filling her in but they didn’t have time for this, Janson was starting to read the names and any moment, any second—

 _You expect me to believe time travel?_ Rachel asked, eyes narrowed but face contemplative.

_Rachel, I swear to god if you do not start choking on something right this second you will be dead within an hour. Or as good as dead, anyway._

“Tommy, what’s—” Newt said, concerned, but Thomas waved his hand away and took the tray Newt was trying to shove into his hands.

 _You really believe that, don’t you?_ Rachel said, her mind voice in careful control.

**_Please._ ** _Aris said you were his best friend, don’t make him see you like that again._

A beat passed. Then Rachel took an enormous bite of her food and promptly started to choke and hyperventilate on it, collapsing from her seat at the long table and crashing down to the floor.

“And Rach—” Janson said, but he stopped at the noise of the crash and wasn’t able to get the word fully out. “What’s going on over there? Medic!”

Janson ran over to when Rachel was spasming on the floor, and Aris leapt out of his seat so they could reach her better.

 _Think this is convincing enough or should I start turning blue?_ She asked Thomas, and he couldn’t help but think it’d be easy to be her friend if this was how she was under a crisis.

“Do we… know her?” Newt asked cautiously.

“Rachel,” Thomas whispered. Newt tapped his knuckles in response. One more life they were taking responsibility for, one more person they were trying to save.

 _Aris?_ Thomas sent out.

_What?_

_Don’t let her go alone, insist on guarding her otherwise they might just take her off anyway._ Thomas recommended, but he saw Aris shake his head slightly.

_No need, Harriet and Sonya have got it covered._

Thomas felt the blood drain from his face and the world rushed up into his ears. Aris gave a small nod to where an angry girl with dreadlocks and a slight blonde woman were arguing with the guards and refusing to let Rachel out of their sight. Thomas started to hyperventilate.

 _Why aren’t they with the right arm? They should have gotten away from the Maze and gone to the Right Arm!_ Thomas yelled, not even bothering to hide his panic. The boys around him were trying to get Thomas’s attention, to get him to calm down, but Newt shushed them off and told them all to go back to their food—of course he promptly ignored his own orders and instead let his gaze travel in the direction Thomas was staring in.

 _How do you know about that?_ Aris asked, amazed. Which meant it had happened. The girls **did** make it to the Right Arm, but somehow ended up here anyway. A sick feeling churned in Thomas’s gut, vague knowledge about risks of time travel and something called a butterfly effect ran circles around his mind. What had he and Newt done so differently that things had changed so drastically?

_Answer. The question. Something’s not right, they shouldn’t **be** here, you understand? Last time they were safe with the Right Arm but now…._

_Thomas, there is no Right Arm anymore. They found their post in the mountains two days ago and brought back every immune they found there. Called it a rescue and have threatened them to keep it quiet._

The bottom dropped out of Thomas’s stomach the very same moment he felt Newt stiffen next to him—his eyes have finally landed on where Sonya and Harriet were accompanying their ‘choking’ sister to the med bay.

_Thomas?_

He didn’t know what to do. Newt’s death grip on his arm was going to bruise and Thomas was going over every last detail of their plan, of all they’d changed, of how they were absolutely screwed if what Aris said was true.

 _Something has gone horribly, terribly wrong._ Thomas responded. He and Newt shared a glance of mutual terror at their current situation; Newt might not have a telepathic link but he could see his sister and Harriet, read the panic on Thomas’s face, and make his own guesses.

What had they done?


	4. Butterfly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> but·ter·fly ef·fect  
> noun  
> (with reference to chaos theory) the phenomenon whereby a minute localized change in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere.

Somehow, and Thomas wasn’t sure how, they pulled it together enough to carry on about their day. The entire time Thomas was on the edge, moving through the halls and forced conversations with his friends on autopilot, and slowly getting updates from both Aris and Rachel on what exactly was going on and what had happened to the Right Arm.

It was a nightmare.

Newt was about at his wits end but there was only so much that Thomas could tell him through glances and hand signals, both of them were useless for the entire day. If it wasn’t for Ben shuffling them where they needed to go and Alby being in charge of the group Thomas was sure that things would have started going to pieces immediately. Sure, Newt and Thomas talked and joked while they were in the common room with the others—a very large room full of games and music and places for them all to sit and chat and mingle—but the Gladers knew that something was wrong.

Aris had come to join them, to get to know them, since Sonya, Harriet, and Rachel were all in the medical wing and he was alone. Alby, upon hearing his name, welcomed him with open arms. Everyone knew that Aris was the key to the Right Arm, due to his connection with people already there, but none of that mattered.

Aris had been telling the truth.

The world was in a far worse state than it’d been in the last time that Thomas had seen it, that was for sure. Thomas just had no idea how it had all gone to shit so quickly. He’d been so far gone inside his head trying to formulate the timeline for events that had transpired and what they meant that by the time he came out of it he realized that they were back in their dormitory.

He and Newt were tucked away on Thomas’s bed, lying on their sides, with the blanket thrown over their heads. They both had their knees drawn up to their chests almost, and Newt was holding both of Thomas’s hands in his own—the bed wasn’t very large, they were touching in more places than Thomas could count, but it was not in a way that could be enjoyed.

Newt was shaking.

“Welcome back,” he whispered.

“How long have I…” Thomas said.

“Several hours. We’ve only been lying here for a few moments, though. It’s the best we could come up with in case there are cameras in here.” Newt explained. Despite it all, he was nervous. Concerned that Thomas would take exception to their current position. Thomas squeezed Newt’s hands tighter in response.

“It’s not good, Newt.”

Newt exhaled and it made him seem small, vulnerable. “What the bloody fuck are they doing here, Tommy? They’re meant to be with the Right Arm.”

They were speaking so softly that Newt’s words were no more than puffs of air on Thomas’s cheek. He used that to keep himself grounded.

“They were, for about a week. But then two days ago, the day before we got here, the day we escaped the Maze, there was an attack,” Thomas had to pause to gather himself. He couldn’t bring himself to look into Newt’s eyes so instead he focused on the way Newt’s chest rose and fell with every breath. “It wasn’t on the little outpost near the tunnel, it was their main camp, Newt. Rachel said it was mass destruction. Sonya and Harriet and the rest of the immunes were rounded up so quickly they couldn’t even tell who lived and who died, just that people were dropping like flies as the soldiers carried them away. They said that everything was on fire and the smoke went for as far as they could see,” Tears welled in his eyes.

“They heard an explosion while they flew away and said that it was large enough that the shockwave rocked the Berg they flew away on.”

Newt started to shake more forcefully and when Thomas looked at his face he saw that his eyes were screwed shut and he was crying. Thomas joined him in his grief.

For months they lived, fought, and planned with those people. The ones who had survived the initial attack, anyway. They had traded their stories and helped to heal each other’s wounds. Together they had bled and cried and built a new life around the ashes of the one that had come before. Vince, Mary, Joe, Caleb, Morgan, Manny, Fran, Ian, and countless others. Everyone who’d ever found their home or their hope within the Right Arm… all of them gone.

And with them their salvation.

Thomas watched through watery eyes and Newt visibly pulled himself back together, piece by piece; his tears stopped, the shudders calmed, and his eyes cleared. Thomas would never not be amazed by the man in front of him, who brushed his fingers along Thomas’s in such an unconscious movement that was the antithesis of the control he was trying to show on his face.

“How?” Newt asked, voice hoarse.

“Do you remember anything about something called a ‘butterfly effect’?” Thomas asked. The gaps in all of their knowledge were the oddest things, really. They remembered what something _was,_ however not how they gained the knowledge or what it was to experience such a thing. They way Newt’s face fell was enough to tell Thomas that he did.

“When I first… woke up,” Newt whispered. “I was so afraid of doing anything differently because I didn’t want to cause something worse to happen later. But then you came up, and…”

“… and then I said to hell with it and changed as much as I possibly could,” Thomas finished.

Once again Thomas had the best of intentions, but he plowed straight through with his plans without even considering possible future outcomes other than the ones he was aiming for. He’d killed all of those people, but how could he feel guilty about it when he’d saved so many already? Or did by saving them all and subsequently killing the Right Arm had Thomas only created a future in which all would die, instead of some living?

“No, hey, stop that Tommy I can see exactly what your mind is doing,” Newt whispered. His palm was now cupping Thomas’s cheek and his thumb was brushing away the tears that had once again gathered on his lashes. “You did none of this alone, you understand? None of it. At any point I could have stopped you. Whatever happened, whatever _will_ happen, it’s on us both.”

Something squeezed Thomas’s heart at the gesture and the tears fell anew, though whether it was out of fear or affection for Newt he wasn’t sure anymore. Newt just made him feel… _everything_. All at once. He always had.

“Newt, I—”

“No. I mean it, Tommy. Together, you and me? We’ve gotten ourselves into and out of worse messes, and I’m not going to let you give up now. Not ever.” Newt’s other hand came up to Thomas’s face so that he was holding it completely. Newt stared so intensely into Thomas’s eyes that for a moment he thought…

“Breathe,” Newt said. Some small part of Thomas sat back down and shrank into the corner he had kept it hidden in before he’d been forced over and over to acknowledge it. “Focus. You’re Thomas, my Tommy. You ignore the rules and laws of physics and you do what needs to be done. Think. What is our next step?”

“Escape,” Thomas muttered dutifully.

“Step two?”

“Find Gally.”

“Step three?”

“Brenda and Jorge.”

“And then?” Newt asked, his voice as warm as his eyes.

Something about the calm, matter of fact manner Newt used managed to clear the fog from Thomas’s mind and allowed him to look at the larger picture. “… Just because they found the camp doesn’t mean they found the boat, if we can get to it and bring as many people as we can, we still have a shot at getting the hell away from WCKD.”

Newt’s smile was a weak and fragile thing, but it was a smile. “Good that, mate. Sounds an awful lot like a plan, though lacking in a few details.”

Thomas’s chuckle was equally as weak at Newt’s smile. “Isn’t that what we do best? Make it up as we go? Details can be figured out as we go. Why bother with them when they’ll have to change a million times anyway?”

The hands on his face tightened a bit before they fell away completely, and Thomas would have mourned the loss more if Newt hadn’t immediately clasped his hands again. Newt’s smile was stronger now and it lived in his eyes, something about it just made Thomas feel like as long as they stuck together then everything would be okay in the end.

“There, that’s my Tommy,” Newt whispered, and it made Thomas’s mind spin.

That was the second time Newt has used those words, in that voice, and Thomas shuddered at the implications. At the complete and utter truth behind them. Thomas was his in every way he could think of and the revelation didn’t frighten Thomas nearly as much as he felt it should have.

For the longest time he and Newt just stared at each other, breathing in the same air and sharing the same space, and they just let the fears and uncertainty of the world outside their blanket melt away along with their wakefulness. Curled up facing each other and holding hands, they didn’t even notice when they fell asleep.

 

 

The next morning, when Newt and Thomas woke up the same way they’d fallen asleep, their peace remained. It was a small thing, for them to wake up in such a position and look the truth of it in the face unabashedly, but Thomas knew it _meant_ something. It had to.

It took everything Thomas had not to run his fingers through Newt’s ridiculous bed hair that stuck out in every direction and almost framed his head like a helmet. Newt noticed anyway, shoved him a bit, and placed his two fingers on the inside on Thomas’s wrist pressed. Thomas’s turn to lead, then. A cheeky smirk later and Newt left the bed.

For the first time, Thomas didn’t feel empty at the loss of contact like he usually would. It was almost as though through the night and their shared heat Thomas had gained more of Newt than could ever realistically be lost.

When Thomas extracted himself from the blanket, it was to find all of his Runners sitting on their bunks, staring at him. Some with fear, some with expectation, some with hope, and Ben with certainty and trust. Thomas had no idea what it was he’d done to earn his unwavering loyalty, but he would cherish it for the rest of his life.

“What’s the plan, then?” Ben asked, boldly.

They knew they might be watched, that things were tenuous, but Thomas couldn’t exactly leave them hanging out to dry with nothing at all.

“We keep going, see what happens. Give it all our best shot and pick up the pieces as we go. The road changed but the destination, hasn’t. Live a WCKD free life, if these guys at the facility can give us that… well. Then we take it. Not much else we can do,” Thomas shrugged. He knew his Gladers, knew that the last sentence was all part of a show meant for people they weren’t even sure was watching.

“I think we can manage that,” Justin said.

“As long as these guys are who they say they are,” Doug added.

Again, all for the show. Thomas has never once regretted his choice to tell the Gladers everything and since then he’d only been proven right again and again. This was one of those times. The knew the importance of maintaining appearances, of biding their time.

“So far, they haven’t given us reason to distrust them, though I can’t blame Alby for how careful he’s being,” Newt said. He had both his and Thomas’s toothbrushes in hand and passed Thomas’s on to him. “They’re healing Minho, yeah? I doubt they’d do that if they had dishonorable intentions.”

“Speaking of Alby, we should probably get cleaned up and get out of here. If we are late to breakfast then he’ll start to worry,” Thomas said.

The Runners nodded and started their complicated process of getting ready—which including strapping as much of their supplies to their bodies as was humanly possible without it being weird. Med supplies, aloe, Ben hid his two vials of the cure in his socks, and they all triple checked that their wrist daggers were well hidden and in good condition. Things like water bottles they could carry openly, but they tried to only carry their essentials on their bodies and to let everything else sit in the packs. Each day they rotated which boys wore backpacks so that the sight of them wearing packs and belts would just be another weird quirk of their group, and nothing sudden or strange.

Every move they made had a purpose, every action was thought out, and it was all carried out as though they’d done it for every day of their lives and not like it was something new.

How WCKD kept underestimating their obvious intelligence was a mystery that Thomas didn’t even want to solve, not when it so often worked in their favor.

 

 

“All good?” Alby asked Thomas when they all met for breakfast. The way that Newt was standing slightly behind and to the right and Ben on his left must’ve given away who was carrying the burden that day.

“Will be, it’s just an adjustment from where we came from, ya know?” Thomas said. Alby was smart enough to read between the lines, they all were.

“Good that, I get it. No crazy turns though. We keep order, we keep sanity, we keep together. Don’t want no shank pullin’ some crazy klunk and ruinin’ this place for us, good that?” Alby said.

“I’m watchin’ him, yeah?” Newt assured. “No bloody Greenie is gonna go off the rails, Alby, slim it.”

Alby gave a single nod and moved on. Newt, Ben, and Thomas went to get their trays of food before joining the others at the table; Thomas wanted to sit next to Clint so he could get an update on Minho’s progress under proper medical attention. He felt an itch on the back of his neck, a slight tingle, but he ignored it and continued on.

“He’s doing remarkably better, how fast he is healing blows my mind honestly. The nurse said that Minho would be able to leave the med bay and join the rest of us as early as tomorrow! And she was teaching me this new technique—” Clint continued to go on about what he’d learned, but Thomas was forced to tune him out because Aris had just walked into the room.

 _Everything still okay on your end?_ Thomas asked him.

_Yeah, so far. You find a way to get us out of this mess yet, future boy?_

Thomas had to fight not to roll his eyes, and to ignore the prickle that once again crawled his skin, but this time it came from his left. _Working on that. Got a plan, details are just a bit fuzzy. You just keep your girls in medical and we can deal with the rest._

 _I’ll let them know._ Aris’s voice faltered a bit. _Or I guess you can. Sorry, not used to someone other than Rachel and me being able to talk._

Thomas chuckled, _No worries, man. You can sit over here if you like._

For the third time in a few minutes, Thomas felt the sensation on his skin, one like he was being watched, so he finally turn to discreetly find the source. It was coming from the right… across the room… there! Janson was leaning against the wall, staring at him with enough focus that Thomas had been able to pick it up in his peripherals, but had dismissed his instincts entirely until the feeling went away.

“Newt?” Thomas asked under his breath, “Have I done anything to make Janson hate me yet?”

His heart was hammering in his chest so hard he thought it was about to jump straight out of his throat and impale itself on his fork.

“Janson? No, why?” Newt asked, confused. Thomas gave the hand signal for _look to the right_. There Janson stood, knuckles white from his grip on his clipboard and eyes lost to madness, a madness that Thomas had only seen once before.

 

 

_He and Janson traded blows and took turns slamming each other into walls. Thomas was bleeding from all over and so was Janson. They used every object within reach as a weapon, though Janson tried like hell to get his gun and Thomas did all he could to keep him from it._

_They rolled on the ground, into counters, sharp implements flying everywhere while Teresa lay unconscious on the floor. Something cut Janson and smeared his blood all up and down Thomas’s side. The sheer amount left there was only eclipsed by the amount of the sticky black blood that had come from Newt, and Thomas watched in horror as the two blood stains mixed into one._

_-_

_“I think it’s blood,” Thomas had told Newt. “I was wearing the clothes that I wore the night… well.”_

_-_

_Janson’s shock at the sheer number of Gladers who survived._

_His confusion over Alby being the leader._

_The fact that no matter what they did, Janson allowed it, maintaining his control but allowing them their freedom with grace._

_Janson knew the location of the Right Arm._

_Janson knew that immunes would be there._

_Janson knew everything, knew about Teresa and what side she chose in the end._

_Knew the lengths Thomas would go to protect Minho, who was in his clutches once again, knew the lengths he would go to try and save Newt._

_Janson knew that Thomas was the Cure._

“Tommy…”

Thomas kept his face still and stared down at his breakfast while his shaking fingers reached under the table to tap out the sequence for _danger._

He knew those eyes just as he’d known Newt’s when he came up in the Box. He knew. There was no other explanation and it all fell into place…

**_Janson remembered._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you really think that after all of the fighting, after all of the craziness in the Last City, that Newt's blood was the only blood that managed to stay on Thomas's clothes?
> 
> Welcome, everyone, to the ACTUAL start of this story.
> 
> <3


	5. Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing ever goes to plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I'm aware that in movie verse Ava wasn't actually at the Facility, she was somewhere else. Don't care! My story now. For the purposes of this story, Ava is at her office in the Facility during the events of this chapter.

Breakfast ended, though the food Thomas ate turned to ash in his mouth. He relayed what he could of what he’d figured out to Aris and Rachel, telling them to be on their guard, that things were likely to get a lot more interesting in the very near future; doing it all while avoiding a panic attack was virtually impossible, however.

His lungs felt full of glass and every breath only made them crack and bleed. Newt had a death grip on his arm, fingers clutched so hard there were sure to be bruises around Thomas’s wrist later, and Thomas could feel him trying not to hyperventilate.

“Newt,” Thomas whispered. “Newt calm down.”

“Calm down? _Calm down?!_ You’ve got to be bloody joking me!”

Thomas reached down, grasped Newt’s thigh, and squeezed it tightly. “Hold it in until we can get back to the rooms, okay? We can’t let him know that we know.”

Newt gave a sharp exhale and stabbed down at this breakfast with his fork so hard that he nearly cracked his tray.

“That’s… that’s not exactly better.”

“Slim it, Tommy.”

Thomas busied himself with trying to catch the attention of any other Keepers, or Alby, but no one was paying attention. Everyone was focused on their breakfast or on their conversation, they only people who noticed that Newt and Thomas were having, yet another, breakdown were the ones seated at the table. Clint and Zach were both starting to panic, Thomas could tell, but there was nothing he could do except to tell them that the jig was up, it was go time, whether they were ready or not.

 _Rachel?_ Thomas asked.

_What else has gone wrong? Is the rest of WCKD miraculously from the future as well?_

_Nothing, yet. Your bed is right near Minho’s, right?_

_Yeah,_ she responded. _He and the two boys with him nearly had a heart attack when Sonya and Harriet introduced themselves and he’s been panicking since._

_Sounds right. Could you possibly say something loud enough for them to hear it?_

When they were returning their empty trays to the kitchen Thomas was finally able to flag Alby’s attention down—along with about 15 other Gladers. Newt was glaring at the floor and ensuring that he remained physically attached to Thomas at all times; not like Thomas could blame him, however it meant that Newt _really_ wasn’t going to like the plan Thomas was starting to come up with.

_Okay... what am I telling him?_

Once Alby was in hearing distance, Thomas focused his energy so that he would be able to speak aloud and telepathically to Rachel at the same time.

“ _Never thought I would miss Frypan’s Stew,_ ” Thomas said both aloud and in his head. The effects were immediate.

Newt started cursing, every Glader’s eyes blew wide, and Alby grew three shades lighter in one go. They all tensed, but they knew what to do. They knew what it meant. Gear on, guard up, and be ready for anything.

“Stupid, fucking, dim-witted, absolutely mad, bloody,” Newt muttered, each step was a new curse and his face was like thunder.

“You sure bout this Thomas?” Alby asked.

“’Course he is,” Newt grumped. “He’s thought it through completely and isn’t at all flying by the seat of his pants with a plan he hasn’t so much as said he has or discussed with anyone.”

Thomas ignored him and focused on Alby. “We aren’t the only people who’ve…. _Come a long way._ ” Newt might have abandoned all pretense of anything at all, but Thomas was still trying to be at least a little bit discreet.

“Shit,” Alby said. It looked like he was about to say more but he stomped off in the direction of their rooms, just like every other Glader who’d been in hearing distance was doing. They grabbed their wayward friends who were on their way to the common rooms and instead dragged them along with the others. Alby quietly passed his orders to any he could, “Let no doors close, then meet in the Common rooms.”

“Are you even listening to me?” Newt asked. He tried to make Thomas stop walking and talk to him but Thomas just plowed forward, forcing Newt to either keep up or get left behind; as if Newt would let himself fall behind, ever.

 _Uh, Thomas?_ Rachel said.

 _Did you say it?_ He asked.

_Oh, I said it… they all groaned, started cursing, and Minho asked why they even bother making plans in the first place. Justin threw something and Jeff is stealing as many medical supplies as he can get his hands on. What the hell did I say?!_

_Time to go, basically._

_Right,_ she said. _Just so you know? Minho apparently thinks you’re insane. He’s not wrong._

_You’ll get used to it._

Eventually.

 

 

“No. No, you absolute wanker, I cannot even begin to tell you exactly how much of a plan that _isn’t_ but I’m not going to bother because it is not happening,” Newt yelled.

They were in their rooms with the rest of the Runners, gearing themselves up so that they would be prepared to move out at a moments notice and not risk being caught out in the scorch without any supplies. Thomas wanted to be irritated, he did, but he caught the wildness in Newt’s eyes and the terror in his voice and forced himself to drop his bag on the bed and turn to face him. Newt’s eyes were a storm of emotion that Thomas felt his chest mirror, but he didn’t know what else to do.

“Newt, he knows. He has to know, okay? Think about it. We show up here with quadruple the number of boys? We’re paranoid and suspicious of everyone around us? How else could that have happened if we didn’t know, huh? What else could have caused it?” Thomas asked, voice soft. As he spoke Newt started shaking his head. In denial of what, Thomas wasn’t sure, but in denial of _something_ , certainly. It broke his heart.

“I don’t care, this plan is stupid, Thomas, you can’t be serious,” Newt argued. “And what about the other’s, huh? The plan was for us to break out them all, save as many as we could, which means we need more time than this!”

“Newt we are _out_ of time!” Thomas snapped. His ears were ringing and his heart was racing, and all movement inside their dorm stopped at Thomas’s shout. Newt’s mouth clicked shut and his eyes burned, but he was listening. “Newt, he knows I’m the cure. He knows everything, okay? He was there for it all. At any moment he could call one of us to be drained, and then what? We try to break out of the cafeteria, unprepared and outnumbered?”

“No, but—”

“And the plan is the same, right? When we go we bust out as many as will follow and protect them as long as we can but we can’t do any of that if we can’t even get out of here in the first place.”

“And you think that going to that awful woman is the answer to this? That somehow she will side with us over that mad man?” Newt demanded.

“She might, when I tell her everything I have to say. And if we have to choose between the two of them at least at the very end she wasn’t a lunatic!”

“No, Thomas, it doesn’t make any sense at all because that only matters if she _believes you!_ And you have nothing, you understand? He’s mucked up everything about this world now, you can’t just say you’re from the future when you’ve nothing to offer her as proof!”

“Not nothing,” Thomas whispered. Realization dawned on Newt’s face only a split second before Thomas saw his arm swing and felt a sharp sting across his cheek and his head jerk to the side.

“Shit,” someone muttered.

Thomas palmed the redden skin and looked back at Newt; his eyes shone and his hands were shaking so badly Thomas was amazed that he’d been able to pull off the slap. “Don’t you dare, Tommy. Don’t you do that, you understand?” Newt’s voice was midnight quiet and as penetrating as a blade. Newt somehow forced his shaking fingers into a pointed fist and waved it at him. “There are so many ways out of this that don’t involve you giving yourself up—and even if there weren’t? I would rather all of us die than you be strapped up and drained of every last drop. I would let the world burn and light the bloody fire myself.”

Newt meant it. He meant every last word and Thomas knew it—the problem was that Thomas felt the same way about Newt. He would rather be strung to a machine and tortured for every last day of his life than to watch Newt or any of the others fall into their clutches. It just wasn’t an option. Not for any of them, but especially not Newt.

“And what happens if Janson tells them? What happens if he tells them all and I lose any advantage I would have had if I tried to convince her that Janson will only betray her?” Thomas asked.

“But then what’s the point of you going?! What exactly is it that you plan on achieving by seeking her out and having your little conversation? She’s not going to let us out, finding the cure is too important for her. We are expendable on that quest we learned that the hard way already. So why don’t we just go? All of us, right now make a run for it like we did before?” Newt begged.

“He’s the distraction,” Ben stated. Thomas closed his eyes against the truth.

“What?” Newt asked.

“He is convinced Janson knows, right? Which means he remembers how you all got out last time. He’s gonna be watching. But if Thomas goes to Ava then Janson will be too busy freaking out about that to be paying attention to the rest of us, since Thomas is the only one Janson wants. Thomas wants the rest of us to escape while he has his conversation with Ava,” Ben explained.

Newt looked from Ben to Thomas and waited for him to deny it, but he couldn’t. That was exactly the plan, he just hadn’t wanted Newt to know that just yet.

“And how were you going to get us all to leave?” Newt forced out through the emotion clogging his throat.

“Aris,” Thomas admitted. He’d gone over the details of his plan while they’d been forcing down some breakfast—Thomas would go to Ava and then have Aris shout out more code words to get the Gladers to follow him out, using the badge that Rachel had gotten Harriet to swipe off of one of the guards in the medical bay. The muscle in Newt’s jaw clenched and unclenched several times before he was able to speak.

“Right then,” Newt whispered. “And how were you planning on joining us? I’m assuming that you had some wild idea for that as well, yeah? Or was that it you just get us out and then stay behind to ensure they don’t follow us?”

“No, Newt, I have a plan to get out,” Thomas said softly. He hated this, the way Newt looked like a trapped animal ready to lash out at a moments notice. Newt was chewing on his lips and he gestured for Thomas to go ahead before putting his hands on his hips.

“Let’s hear it then, c’mon,” he threw the words down like a gauntlet.

Thomas sighed. “When you guys got out there’d be an alarm, just like last time. We would go on lockdown. During a lockdown procedure their protocol dictates that all immunes be moved to a secure location—our rooms. To get from Ava’s office to our rooms we’d have to pass the med bay where the emergency exit is located, we couldn’t go that way the last time because of the guards blocking it, but since the guards will all be headed to the loading bay to chase you all then I can break out, grab a badge, and disappear from the side exit.”

“You actually did have a plan, then,” Newt said.

“Yes, I do. And it’ll work.”

“And when it doesn’t?” Newt asked.

“ _If_ it doesn’t work, I’ll improvise. And if all of that doesn’t work then I guess I’ll meet you at headquarters,” Thomas said.

Newt’s head tilted in denial and disbelief, praying he hadn’t heard correctly. But he had. Thomas was well aware that this could all go south so badly, that there were a thousand little details that could turn against them at any moment, but that had never stopped him before. Why should it now? Thomas was the one in the best place to bargain with Ava and they all knew it. They needed the distraction to get out and short of blowing up have the building (which Thomas had considered but he didn’t have access to nearly enough explosive material to pull that off) this was the best option. And if it all failed, Thomas would be taken. He knew that. But he also knew that it _was_ possible to get someone out WCKD Headquarters, it _was_ possible for him to be saved.

“I’m coming with you,” Newt declared. Thomas wondered if newt even knew that he’d started to cry—then again, Thomas had only just noticed that tears were falling from his own eyes as well.

“No, Newt, you’re not,” Thomas replied. “You’ve got to get them out. They need someone who survived all of this already, and that’s got to be you.”

“I go where you go, Tommy,” Newt said, though his words were hardly more than a gasp. “Don’t you leave me behind.”

Thomas smiled, a sad, broken little thing.

“You’re the only one I trust to get me out if this doesn’t work.”

Newt stared him down and Thomas took his time watching the emotions run across he eyes. Fear, defiance, rage, confusion, worry, trust, and finally something that Thomas couldn’t name. Not if he was going to force himself to go through with this plan. To give it a name was to give it power, and Thomas didn’t know of any force in the world more powerful than the one he saw in Newt’s eyes. Than the one he felt inside himself.

“You had better make it out of here, you understand me? I’m not robbing another bloody train—”

“I’m going with Thomas,” Ben said. The tall boy went to stand on Thomas’s left, the place he’d been taking more and more often lately. “We’ll get out.”

“Ben—”

“No, Thomas, slim it. Gally made me promise more than just to stab him with a shucking spear, alright? I’m going with you or I’m knocking you out and dragging you out of here.”

“Good that,” Newt said.

There was a moment, then, that Thomas could almost feel the tension in the air. The push to _say something_ , to _do something_ , to make sure that never again Newt would vanish from his life without _knowing_. And Thomas could see the same dilemma warring on Newt’s face, battling for control. But to do it now felt too much like admitting defeat, like saying there was no way in hell they would ever see each other again. So, instead, Thomas reached out with trembling fingers and placed them on the inside of Newt’s wrist; Newt was in charge, now.

And then Thomas turned and marched out of that room; past where Doug was standing like a human shield against the door closing, passed every Runner looking at Thomas with new respect, with Ben hot on his heels.

He pretended not to hear the crash and the choked off shout that came from their room and marched forward in search of the nearest guard. He was almost two hallways away and looked bored out of his mind, but that suited Thomas just fine.

“Take me to Director Paige,” Thomas said with as much authority as he could muster.

The guard did a doubletake and looked ready to either sound the alarm or tell Thomas to mind his own business—neither of which were acceptable.

“Listen, let’s just skip the whole part where we go back and forth about whether or not she exists, alright? You just go to that phone three paces to your left, you call her, and you tell her that she didn’t do as good of a job on giving ‘Thomas’ the swipe as she thought she did, and that I want to speak to her, sound good?”

The guard stared at Thomas for a moment more, dumbfounded, before he did exactly as Thomas told him to do. Thomas tried to keep his cool while they waited, tried to seem like he was in complete control. It was a relief when the guard hung up the phone and turned back towards them.

“I’ll take you to her office.”

 

Ava stared at Thomas like she was trying to figure out if Thomas had lost his mind or if he was up to something. The answer was probably both, honestly, but that was neither here nor there. The whole point of this exercise was to keep everyone as distracted as possible while Aris and Newt got everyone out, not for her to actually believe him.

They’d been sat in her office for about ten minutes by this point, plenty of time for all the Gladers to gather and begin with their escape, and Thomas had used that time to tell Ava about his recent experience with time travel—namely that Janson betrayed her once and would happily do it again.

“And you’re saying that he betrayed me because the virus had gone airborne and I’d given up? Is that it?” Ava asked. Her voice sounded more contemplative than anything else, but that wasn’t really much of a surprise. To her everything was part of the experiment.

 _Thomas, we’re going._ Rachel said- the group in medical was on their way out, excellent.

 _On the move._ Aris said. He was with the rest of the Gladers.

“Honestly, I figured you would be more hung up on the whole time travel aspect of it instead of getting bogged down in details,” he said. He was only half paying attention to their conversation anyway, most of his attention was on trying to listen over the guards’ radio for news of suspicious activity. Ben was sitting next to him and strung as tight as a bow string, ready to jump at a moment’s notice. Thomas had to admit he felt a little bit better about the situation knowing that he wasn’t in here alone. A lot could happen if you didn’t have someone to watch your back. “But yes, essentially. He shot you directly in front of me while you tried to talk me into bringing the immunes back for more study and experimentation, asking us to save the world.”

“Crazier things have happened than a rip in time, Thomas. Given genetics and radiation and the world in flux from the Flare I wouldn’t discount anything without looking at the science. What bothers me about your story is two things: first being that _if_ Janson had decided to kill me it would have been for a better reason and second, just what is it you’re wanting from this conversation? If anything, knowing that the virus becomes more violently airborne so soon is a drive for me to push even harder to find a cure,” Ava explained.

He hated how calm she sounded about this, how she was so sure of her good intentions that she was perfectly in her right to do as she wished with the lives of so many. But perhaps worst of all he hated that the alarms should have sounded by then, but the radio was still completely silent.

_THOMAS RUN!_

_They’re grabbing us all, get out—_

Thomas’s heart nearly stopped beating and he leapt out of his chair in his panic. Ben jumped up as well and his hand almost went for the knives they all kept stored safely away in their wrist guards.

“Thomas, what is the meaning of—” Ava said, but she was interrupted by an incoming call.

Thomas felt like he was going to be sick.

“Answer it,” He ground out. Ava looked confused but did as Thomas asked.

It was Janson.

“Hello, Thomas,” Janson smirked.

“What is going on here?” Ava asked.

“Hasn’t he told you already? We’ve come from another time, he and I, and I’m assuming he’s already told you of our somewhat… strained, relationship towards the end, Director?” Janson said. “Unfortunate, I admit, but I did what had to be done. Just as I’m doing now.”

_Rachel?_

_Aris?_

_…Teresa?_

Silence, silence on all fronts.

Ava looked like she was in shock, but she did an amazing job of hiding it. “And what, pray tell, are you doing now?”

“He’s taking them,” Thomas spat. “He’s taking all of them.”

“ _What?_ ” Ben yelled. “Thomas—”

“You know what it is I want, Thomas. So, I’m proposing a trade. You give it to me, and I’ll set them free. We all know you were willing to hand it over before for just your friend Minho… what about now that I’ve got them all?”

He wasn’t saying ‘Thomas’. He wasn’t saying that Thomas was the cure, because he didn’t want Ava to know. Ava, who wanted to save the world; Janson, who wanted to control it. Thomas wasn’t out of plays here, he could still figure it out he just needed more _time_ —

Voices came over on Janson’s radio, but not on the radio of the guard that was in the office. Janson’s men were using a different channel. Thomas leapt over his chair and wrestled the radio from the guard before scrolling from channel to channel in search of the one that would

**“-ighting back! Man down, man down! Sector C needs backup!”**

**“There’s too many of them!”**

**“Hold you fire, I said _Hold your fire_! Shit, they’ve got our gu—"**

The look on Janson’s face turned nasty as he shouted down into his own radio.

**“The tall blond and the boy in medical, did you get them?”**

**“Affirmative!”**

**“Then load up the transport and go, forget the others!”**

Thomas had stopped listening.

“Janson,” Ava began with fury turning her features almost inhuman. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?! Thomas, no!”

Thomas and Ben flew out of that door so quickly that he almost missed Janson’s last words to him, “You know where to find me, Thomas.”

But he didn’t care. He couldn’t breathe he couldn’t think, all he could do was run in the direction of the shouts and the screams and the gunshots. He bypassed the now empty medical bay, their rooms, making a bee-line for the loading dock. That’s when he started to notice the bodies. There were more guards bleeding out on the ground than there were stunned immunes, but Thomas passed the still forms of so many—he noticed Aris and Justin among them.

But he didn’t worry about them, couldn’t worry about them. The goal had been to take them alive, they immunes, they were far too valuable to let go to waste.

Newt, Newt, Newt, he’d said that they had Newt.

Thomas and Ben reached the loading dock to find that there were Gladers fighting side by side with about half of the guards—the other half were sprinting in the direction of six helicopters that were beginning to take off, one by one.

He was too late. Always too late.

Frypan grabbed Thomas by his shoulders as he tried to run by and kept him from sprinting after them. Not again, this couldn’t be happening again. Thomas pushed Frypan’s arms off of him and looked at the group of remaining Gladers to see who was left. There were maybe fifteen of them, altogether, including Justin and Aris who were still stunned. And absent were so many faces that Thomas could hardly even process it.

Alby.

Winston.

Chuck.

Newt.

Rachel.

Doug.

Matt.

Sonya.

Harriet.

Minho.

There were more, so many more, but the list in his brain was stuck on one name in particular. The name of his best friend, the person who he trusted above all else. Thomas’s voice of reason, his moral compass, the person he looked first to when things went to hell. The person that Thomas had died for, had followed literally back in time, the boy who’d been the closest thing that Thomas had ever found to a _home._

The boy he was in love with.

They boy he still hadn’t told.

Newt.

Newt.

_Newt was gone._

A rage unlike any Thomas had ever felt before built up inside him. People were crying, asking him questions, gathering around him, but Thomas heard none of it. He left Ben the task of dealing with it all as he focused on one thought and one thought only. Screw caution, screw causalities, and screw holding back. _Newt was gone._

And the world would burn.


	6. Headache

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas - Moral Compass = ?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly descriptive gore in a few places in the beginning, but nothing too graphic.

He had no idea how long it was that he’d been lost to the river of rage within, but when Thomas resurfaced it was to shouts coming from all directions, shouts laced with betrayal and confusion. Ben was still informing the few remaining Gladers of the fuller picture and more people were starting to flood the hallways—other immunes, people Thomas recognized from his past with the Right Arm and the rescue in the Last City. But they weren’t the ones who were shouting.

It was the guards.

Not the ones who’d taken his friends, the ones shouting were those who clearly still worked for Ava. For a second Thomas was under the impression that they were yelling at the kids, but their attention was fixed over Thomas’s shoulder, on the loading bay behind him. Eventually their words filtered through the stifling silence in his head:

“Stand down, stand down! Drop to your knees!”

They were shouting it over and over, clearly the people they were yelling at weren’t listening, and all the yelling was starting to give Thomas a headache. He did not need a headache right then. In his irritation Thomas glanced over his shoulder to see that the people indirectly causing the pressure to build in his temples were actually those who’d chosen to obey Janson, who’d help to take Newt from him, that had obviously been left behind.

That simplified things.

Someone near him, possibly Zart, was loosely holding onto a gun that had been taken from a guard in the fight that had taken place prior to Thomas arriving. Without thinking too much about it other than the fact that he needed the yelling to stop, Thomas stole the gun and cocked it. No one had time to react before he spun, took aim, and pulled the trigger.

The first pull was always the worst on this model, took a bit more effort and the kick was stronger, but after that it went faster.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

A single shot, center of the head, and they crashed to the ground like dominoes in an explosion of red. For the smallest space of a second Thomas allowed his mind to wander back into the past—to the death of a scientist and the blood that had covered Thomas’s hands, in this exact building; but that was literally a lifetime ago. The silence that came after was blissful, but Thomas could feel people staring at him. A brief glance around the room showed that all eyes were on him, with various signs of shock and outrage. Thomas met eyes with a security guard and raised a single eyebrow in such a way that he knew Gally would’ve been proud.

“There. They stood down. Now shut up,” Thomas said. “You’re giving me a headache.”

“ _Thomas!”_ he heard Ava screech. Oddly enough she sounded more disappointed in him than actually angry that he’d decorated her loading bay with the brain matter of her… former… employees.

“What?” he asked.

Ava had joined them in the battle decorated hallway yet despite the destruction surrounding her she looked as pristine as ever. Her stilettos delicately avoided a puddle of…something, and she clasped her hands together while she pursed her lips. Definitely disappointed. “You’re scaring the children.”

Thomas blinked.

And then he blinked again.

“Ava. You have thirty children permanently locked in suspended animation and are torturing them as we speak—you don’t get to chastise me.” Thomas deadpanned. “And you _really_ don’t get to call them children.”

“What did you just say?”

A soft voice had broken the stare-off between Thomas and Ava, it belonged to a small, waif-like creature who looked more like a pixie than an actual human being. Thomas noticed the way she held herself, the iron in her eyes, and was pleased to think that this girl gladly used people underestimation of her to her advantage. She was a _leader_ , and Thomas wondered why he hadn’t met her before.

“ _What_ did you just _say_?” the girl demanded.

“Oh, Thomas. Now look at what you’ve done,” Ava sighed.

Before she’d even finished talking Thomas had his gun trained on her once more. Not only that, he was surprised to see that the Gladers formed a wall between Ava’s soldiers and the remaining immunes that had spilled into the hallway—those who had weapons had them trained on soldiers, though they were clearly shaken by the events that had transpired around them. Thomas wrote off the soldiers with their weapons pointed at the immunes completely. They wouldn’t shoot, they were far too ‘valuable’.

“Don’t even think about touching them,” Thomas told her.

Ava cocked her head to the side, as calm and collected as ever, and stared at him quizzically. “You’ve pointed a gun at me before, haven’t you?”

“Yep.”

“You lied to me about what happened in the future.”

“I omitted certain truths,” Thomas admitted.

There were a few gasps from his left, which wasn’t entirely unexpected. Time travel took some getting used to, though Thomas would admit that he was glad to be done with all of the secrecy and the pretending. The inaction had been driving him insane and had cost him Newt. Thomas was done pretending.

“Do you honestly intend to shoot me?” Ava asked.

“At the moment?” Thomas shrugged. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ben’s shoulders slump forward a bit, and a voice that sounded suspiciously like Frypan’s mutter out ‘aw hell, here we go’. “Luckily for you, for the first time in living memory you’re actually more useful to me alive than you are dead.”

“How intriguing. Go on.”

It took gargantuan effort to remind himself that Ava was the lesser of two evils and that so many lives could be saved if he had access to her resources. Every second spent talking meant that Newt was being taken farther away, no time could be wasted here.

“First? I’ll be needed a Berg. On a semi-permanent basis. Second? You harm no other immunes between now and the moment we renegotiate. I’d do it with you now, but time is kinda of the essence here,” Thomas said.

She didn’t even look phased.

“And why would I go along with any of that?” she asked.

“Because if you do, then when I get back I’ll give you what Janson just betrayed you to try and get his hands on.”

“Nope, no, not happening,” Ben said. He left his spot in the wall of Gladers to approach Thomas. “Have you lost your mind? Have you _forgotten_ the conversation you and Newt had literally an hour ago? Not happening. He’ll _kill me_ you understand?!”

“Yeah, Thomas, I want them back too. Trust me,” Frypan said. “But not like this.”

One by one the Gladers nodded, and Thomas was touched, really, but they didn’t exactly get a say in this. Thomas locked eyes with Ben and dropped a hard truth, but one that would ensure that Ben didn’t fight him on this.

“Janson remembers, Ben. Which means he knows that Lawrence’s crowd are responsible for the destruction of his city,” Thomas explained. “And that’s _exactly_ where Gally is headed. We need to move fast, and this is the fastest way.”

Ben was already pale, but by the time Thomas finished he was white as a sheet and his freckles looked foreign on his face. “I can handle Newt, do what you need to do.”

Thomas realized that in that moment he and Ben understood each other perfectly—a bond born of the need to protect the love of their life, no matter the cost. Thomas met his eyes and nodded before turning to Ava. She looked contemplative.

“And what would be used as collateral to ensure that you did actually return?” she asked. Thomas rolled his eyes.

“You’re joking, right? Exactly _how_ many of us do you have imprisoned here at the moment? They’re my collateral.”

“Now wait just a damn minute,” the waif-like girl from before said while she pushed herself through the line of Gladers to face them, ignoring the guns. “Someone tell us what is going on! And stop talk about us like we are pawns to be traded!”

At any other time, Thomas would feel guilty for his lack of compassion, but that wasn’t his area of expertise. It was Newt’s. And what these people weren’t understanding was that _Newt was gone_ and therefore their petty arguments and emotions literally didn’t rate on Thomas’s scale of importance. He felt his eye twitch at yet another delay and was glad when Clint spoke up.

“Alright, fine. Justin and Aris are knocked out anyway, the three of us will stay here as collateral _and_ inform the masses of what’s actually going on here. You go get them back, and if by the time you get back that bitch has us strung up to one of those creepy ass machine you blow this place all to hell, good that?” Clint crossed his arms and looked from Thomas, who still had his gun raised, to Ava, who was still ignoring it.

There was a beat of silence.

“Give them what they need,” Ava said. “We have a deal.”

 

 

Of course, none of the Berg’s had been fueled so that was another thirty minutes of waiting before they were finally in the air. Ava’s bargain included a pilot who could teach them how to operate the massive aircraft and supplies for their trip. Not much, only what would be needed for a day or two, but it was more than Thomas has expected and he didn’t plan on being gone for long anyway. He didn’t trust Ava to sit on her laurels for very long, regardless of the deal they’d made.

Ava wasn’t familiar enough with this version of Thomas to regard him as a threat yet, but she would be.

The Berg sailed off in the direction of the Last City as fast as Thomas could convince the pilot, some girl their age named Eva, to fly it. A Slicer named Dan was up front with her, learning the controls and keeping an eye on things to ensure that she didn’t try to pull anything.

Thomas might have worked with WCKD once, but as far as he was concerned none of them were to be trusted.

Ben, Frypan, and Zart approached him on the bridge, the latter with a black eye and an uneasy gait. Thomas braced himself for the flood of questions that would be coming, that Thomas truly had no idea how to answer, but he respected that they’d let him go as long as he had without having to go through it with them.

“Hey guys,” Thomas said. He wiped his face with his hand before running it through his hair in a nervous tick he’d never quite gotten over doing. The mint leaf he’d been chewing on for the past ten minutes was starting to lose flavor, so Thomas spat it out into a nearby trash can. The trio watched it all in silence.

It was another few moments before Frypan broke the silence with a sigh.

“Look man,” Frypan said. “I don’t wanna be the one to ask this, but do we have an actual plan here or what?”

Thomas said nothing, so Ben pressed the issue. “Say we do catch up to them, right? What then? How exactly do we rescue people while we are several miles up in the air?”

Thomas had no idea.

None.

Zero.

“No,” he said. “I have no plan here, not really, I just…” he didn’t know how to explain it. This wasn’t so much a rescue mission as a… see what they would find, mission? “They were armed. You said they weren’t drugged and they weren’t knocked out. There is no version of these events where they don’t try to make a break for it, and when they do…”

“… You wanna be there to scoop them up or pick up the pieces,” Frypan finished for him, and Thomas could see a small amount of faith creep back into his posture. “Alright, I get that. I can go with that.”

Thomas supposed it probably did help things to know that the person leading them wasn’t completely bat-shit crazy or about to try something as ridiculous as trying to shoot down the helicopters in some mad attempt to scoop the Gladers out of the air as they fell. But only Ben and Frypan seemed to be reassured, Zart was still uncomfortable and Thomas had a sneaking suspicion as to why.

“Go ahead, say it,” Thomas told him softly, as kind as he was capable of being.

After a moment where Zart clearly took a deep breath to prepare himself, the plant-hearted Keeper met his eyes. “Can we take a second to talk about you just… killing them?”

Frypan and Ben shared a glance but said nothing. Thomas didn’t know what that meant. “They took Newt,” Thomas responded.

“But they’re still people! And you shot them like you were pruning a berry bush!” Zart exclaimed.

“They _took Newt_ ,” Thomas repeated, his eyes boring into the Keepers’. Clearly, he wasn’t getting it, although Thomas wasn’t sure why. The moment those men had conspired to take Newt from him they’d stopped breathing—they just hadn’t known it yet. Outside the windows they passed by the familiar ruins of a dilapidated city, but Thomas couldn’t be bothered by nostalgia. “Newt is gone. So is Minho, and Chuck, and Alby, and Matt, and Rachel, and Sonya, and Harriet, and Jeff, and… I could literally stand here for another few minutes naming them all, you realize that? I _was_ pruning, Zart. Pruning the number of monsters on this earth I have to share the oxygen with; and I’m nowhere near finished.”

Zart’s mouth closed with a snap and he blinked several times, uncertain of what to say. But it didn’t matter—that conversation as finished as far as Thomas was concerned. He knew he was being cold, and distant, and merciless, but he didn’t _care._

For the second time in as many lives Thomas was forced to face the possibility of a world without Newt in it, and that meant there were no holds barred anymore. No mercy. Thomas had done worse in the past and would _do_ worse in the future, if needed.

Killing had stopped bothering him a while ago.

Turbulence slammed into the Berg so hard that he Thomas lost his footing. Belatedly Eva yelled from the pilot’s seat, “Hold on everyone! We’ve hit a sandstorm! I’ve got to land!”

Shit.

Thomas and Frypan stumbled up to the front so that they could get their own eyes on the situation, though Thomas nearly bowled over Dmitri in the process. Eva wasn’t lying.

Sand swirled in the air, thick as honey and with winds so violent they were having a hard time staying on course. If they were up in the air much longer the sand would destroy their systems—they were going to have to land and close the vents and flaps and everything else they could.

“If I say we have to land are you going to shoot me? Because we really, really need to do that,” Eva said. Though her voice was nervous her hands were sure as she started landing procedures without his say so.  

_Rachel?_

_Teresa?_

Silence.

“Do what you have to,” Thomas said.

They were going to have to wait it out, however long it took. Thomas couldn’t decide what he wanted for the others, to be honest. If they were caught in the storm as well they’d be forced to land, which would give the Gladers their best chance at escaped—but then they’d be caught out in the storm, and Thomas would be powerless to help them.

_Hang in there, Newt. I’m coming for you._


	7. Stain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt's Journey, Part One.

It was as though a thick, dark, ichor crept through his veins. Drums pounded to the thumping of his heart and Newt’s world narrowed down to the knife he ripped free from it’s hidden sheath on his wrist and the frayed, stinging, ropes they’d used to try and leash him.

The moment they threw the Gladers onto the helicopter, tied them up, and tossed them to the floor like a broken toy the guards in their freshly laundered black outfits disregarded them all. Assumed that was that, they’d won. That because they were now airborne the boys they’d discarded were no longer a threat, or of any consequence at all.

That was their second mistake.

Or third, depending on how you chose to look at it.

Perhaps even their fourth or fifth.

Newt could think up a novel of mistakes these men had made, mistakes they would be regretting very, very soon.

They’d taken him from Thomas. They’d taken Minho. They’d used Chuck, no more than a terrified child, as the means by which to get the Gladers to go with relative quiet. A gun had been held up to poor Chuckie’s head, all bloody and cut up already. It had been enough of a shock to their systems that they’d all frozen—for a moment too long, they’d frozen. The bloody wankers had used that moment to great effect, leashing as many Gladers as they could; in the space of a moment Newt had been leashed to the rope, had his recently liberated weapon knocked from his fingers, and had a bag tossed over his head. Newt had heard over their radios who the real target of the uprising had been.

**_“The tall blond and the boy in medical, did you get them?”_ **

Janson.

Prick.

Thomas had been right, they needed to get out of there. Janson had likely known something was off from the moment they’d shown up with a few too many survivors than he’d anticipated.

He played them from the start.

Newt couldn’t decide if that was something he’d done that counted as a mistake or if it just meant that Thomas and newt had been too arrogant, too cocky, too sure of their own success.

No.

Fuck that shank.

 _That_ had been Janson’s first mistake.

He shouldn’t have stayed, tried to play them.

The moment he realized that he and Thomas remembered? That Newt knew what Janson had done, had _tried_ to do?

Janson should have run.

It was at that thought that Newt’s knife finally broke through the rope and freed him. Quickly, fueled by the sticky rage that surged in his bloodstream, Newt leapt to his feet and ripped the sack off of his head. A single blink told him all he’d needed to know: Newt was the only one to have been bagged, the others were almost free of their ties as well judging from the furious motion of sawing happening between each of their backs, there were four guards and a pilot, and none of them were so much as glancing in his direction.

_Fools._

How dare they write him off? To think that Thomas was the only dangerous one? He was certain that if Thomas had been captured he would have been chained, gagged, blindfolded, and had three guards to do nothing but point a weapon at him in case he so much as twitched. Unacceptable.

Newt lurched towards the nearest guard, the one facing the open side of the helicopter and supposedly surveying the ground below them. In one smooth motion Newt grabbed him from behind his head and put his hand over his mouth. He then gripped his knife and slit the guard’s throat from ear to bloody ear and pushed him out of the aircraft.

One down.

His grip on his knife was too slick, he wouldn’t be able to use it for much longer, so he’d need to make the next kill count.

The audacity, the _nerve_ of these people, thinking they could just **take him from Thomas?**

That Newt would go quietly, that he wouldn’t give them hell every step of the way? That he wouldn’t _raze the world to the ground_ or fell them one by one until he was there to make sure Thomas didn’t try to stage some foolish rescue?

Newt let his anger fuel him forward to the next, completely bloody oblivious how insulting, guard stationed inside the bird. Slitting his throat was just as easy as the first and felt just as vindicating. The blood on his hand was hot and slippery—it stained what had otherwise been a perfectly clean shirt and rendered his small knife unusable for the remaining two guards. Guards who had _finally_ gotten a clue as to the fact that someone was killing them all.

Not just someone.

Newt.

The two guards both turn towards him at the same time, but as the furthest away tried to raise his weapon against him a body flew at the guard and tackled him to the ground. Minho had cut through his rope, apparently.

No matter.

Newt had no blade, but he didn’t need one. He gnashed his teeth together and wrestled the gun from the guard closest to him. There was a brief struggle before the pistol was knocked out of the door. The guard’s large blue eyes widened in fear—good. Newt grabbed his head and slammed it repeatedly against the riveted edge of the doorway until his eyes rolled into the back of his head and the top of his skull was slightly misshapen. Another shove, and another lifeless body fell into the scorch.

Newt turned his attention to where Minho struggled with the man he’d tackled, “Minho, move!” Newt shouted.

One step, two steps, jump, hold, _kick._

Newt had crossed the distance between them quickly before he leapt up into the air and grabbed hold of the aluminum loops in the ceiling that must have been used to secure cargo. Newt brought his legs up to his chest and kicked out with them both to send the guard, screaming, out of the other side of the helicopter.

Good.

He hoped the crash had broken every bone in his body.

Newt dropped back down to the floor and rose slowly to ensure that no damage had been done to his leg, and he looked up at the Gladers from where his hair fell in front of his eyes. At this point they were all free, and all looking at him either fear or awe. Some cases it was both.

Newt ignored them all in favor of marching towards the front, where he could hear the pilot screaming into the radio, and tried to think through his anger to form something even slightly resembling an actual plan, but he couldn’t. Step one: kill. Step two: to be determined after step one.

“Newt—”

Too late.

It was nothing, truly nothing, to rip the headset from the transmission jack and use the cable to wrap around the pilot’s neck twice, before pulling it taut. It was also nothing to keep him there, struggling, fighting for oxygen, as Newt saw his color change and the light leave his eyes. He knew he should feel something, anything, but he couldn’t get past the fact that these people weren’t people at all. They were monsters. And so, if Newt had to become a monster in order to rid the world of their stain then so be it, a monster he would become.

It’s not as if he hadn’t been one before.

If anything, this could be considered returning to his roots, but for a good purpose. He would leave behind a trail of destruction so large it would lead Thomas directly to him.

Minho and Rachel were there when the pilot finally ceased convulsing, and Newt motioned for them to dump that body, too.

“Newt? For the love of god tell me you can fly this thing,” Minho babbled. “Because I’m not sure you noticed but that was the shucking _pilot_ you just strangled.”

Newt’s eyes cut towards Minho, looked him up and down to assess for injury, and then dismissed him completely in favor of Rachel.

“Can you reach him?” Newt demanded. If she could that would alter his current trajectory, but if not then he would need to act fast.

“Out of range,” Rachel said. She met his gaze squarely, evidently the chit wasn’t squeamish or judgmental, but since she couldn’t do what he needed Newt dismissed her as well.

He knocked the pilot’s still warm corpse out of the seat and took his place. Newt stared intently down at the controls, willing his brain to remember _any_ of the lesson’s Jorge had tried to teach him in the scant hours they’d spent in the cockpit together after they’d botched the train job.

None of the dials looked familiar, none, and the nose of the helicopter was beginning to dip. Shit.

Instinctively he reached out to grasp the joystick in front and pulled it back towards himself—too fast. The nose jerked into the sky and sent everyone screaming to the back to the bird.

“Newt!” Minho yelled.

“I’m sorry, alright?!” Newt responded.

“No, not that! Look at the other planes!”

Newt shifted his gaze from the controls to the sight of the helicopters in front of him—where one by one, they began to jerk in odd ways, or had forms dressed in all black falling from the skies like ravens with broken wings.

The Gladers were fighting back.

The helicopter to the left of theirs was jerking the most erratically, almost as though someone were fighting over the joystick Newt now held onto for dear life. He watched in abject horror as the helicopter took a swan dive directly into a dune and exploded in a hash of fire and sand.

There was no way anyone was surviving that, but they all needed to figure out how to land, now.

“Shit… shit…” Winston muttered, panicked. “Who—”

“Not now! Everyone go and hold onto something!” Newt yelled towards the back before adjusting the joystick and aiming the helicopter to the ground. To the right, another Glader controlled aircraft was having the same problem as the one that had just crashed to the ground, so Newt made an executive decision.

“Minho, c’mere,” he said. Newt left his seat and shoved Minho into it. “Slowly push this towards the ground, yeah? Level us out as you can but slow us down and get us to the ground.”

“What?! Are you crazy? I don’t know how to fly this thing!”

Newt ignored him and pushed his way from the cockpit and to the door guns on the right-hand side. Before he allowed himself to think about it too much he prepped the weapon, took aim, and made his shot.

Missed.

“What are you doing! Our people are in here!”

“Newt!”

“Stop!”

Newt tuned them out and took aim one more time—the top blades of the rotor—and he hit square on. Immediately it seemed to gain just a bit more control and began its descent despite the way it jerked from side to side. Newt only hoped that it would work well enough that they could hit the ground without blowing up, otherwise the whole damn thing was worthless.

When he turned to face everyone again, they were all in a state of shock over his actions. Apparently executing their kidnappers was accepted but shooting at their friends to try and help wasn’t. Fantastic. He could help but think that if Thomas were there and he’d pulled the stunt Newt just attempted people would just sort of go with it and move on, whereas Newt coming up with it was something ridiculous and frightening.

Then again, with Thomas a certain amount of madness was expected and in Newt’s experience he was generally expected to behave a little more rationally.

But rationality had allowed Thomas to leave his side for _five bloody minutes_ and look what had happened since then. Nothing good. Clearly rationality was overrated.

“Fuck!”

Newt’s legs jerked out from underneath him when the front of the aircraft plummeted downward and the tail started to spin. He slid towards the opening at a dangerous speed, but Winston and Jake grabbed hold of his flailing arms and kept him steady while Minho stabilized them again.

“What the hell, mate?” Newt yelled up at him.

“Slim it! I have no idea what I’m doing! We are all gonna die!” Minho screamed. “Yesterday I was smelling colors why the hell am I flying a shucking plane!”

Rachel stormed to the cockpit and wrested control from Minho with a roll of her eyes and a sway of her hips. Newt had no idea how, but she quickly had control and they began their descent at a far more natural pace than before. Newt chanced a glance back at the bird he’d shot, only to see that it was near the ground. It’s landing wouldn’t be a kind one but at the very least he hoped that they managed to land without blowing up.

The rage boiling underneath his skin quieted for a moment, just one, to allow for fear. Fear of those who’d gone up in flames and a spray of sand, of the faces he would never see again. Newt didn’t even know who all had been taken, for all he knew they’d all been nabbed.

He only knew that it wasn’t Thomas, because Thomas was out of Rachel’s range of communication. Surely if he’d only been a few hundred feet away they’d been able to speak? They could communicate across the Facility, there was no way that if Thomas had been up in the air with them Rachel could have reach him.

Thomas wasn’t taken.

Newt would be forced to mourn more of his friends, had it been Chuck? Alby? Frypan? Fynn? The possibilities were endless, really.

When Rachel finally brought them safely to the ground, Newt felt his rage return like armor. He would need it to face the Scorch and the hail of memories he’d soon be bombarded with, so he clutched his rage to him as tightly as he could before he stood up once again.

Step one? Check.

Step two?

Time to find out.

 

 

 


	8. Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas can't keep track of his emotions long enough to be able to handle this.

36 hours.

They were trapped inside that god forsaken Berg for 36 hours, and Thomas was about to say fuck it. He’d lived through sand storms before, he was going to set out on foot. Or, he was until Ben decided that Thomas was _not to be trusted_ and wouldn’t leave him alone for more than five shucking seconds.

But when Eva finally gave the all clear to fly again, Thomas found himself disheartened and despondent and he could see the same expression echoed on every single Glader aboard the craft.

There would be no point in flying towards the Last City now, none at all. If the helicopters didn’t get caught by the storm they’d be long gone, the only thing they’d be able to do was circle around and try to see if they were down… if not? Thomas was back to square one. Worse than that, really.

No Newt.

No Minho.

Gally was off somewhere that was about to become very predictable and dangerous.

Over half of the people Thomas had managed to save from the Maze were now on their way to Janson to be tortured for every last drop of the enzyme the dirty bastard could get his hands on… it had all been for nothing. He’d failed. All of them. Every last one.

He’d failed.

He’d failed Chuck, again.

He’d failed Alby, again.

And he’d failed Newt.

Not just ‘again’, but for the thousandth time it felt like.

Thomas had shown up to find Newt taken already, while he’d been off on yet another plan that Newt didn’t approve of. He’d let him down, separated himself from Newt, and the moment it had happened Newt was gone.

Newt was _gone_.

There wasn’t a trail to follow anymore, there was nothing but ruined buildings and a wasteland of sand stretching off into the mountains as far as the eye could see. There was nothing, the landscape looked completely different than it had when they’d passed by this way in pursuit, only the buildings gave any idea of where they really were.

Thomas tried to use them to form a map in his head of when the ground would normally look like, but it wasn’t as though he was on foot anymore. With the exception of a few skyscrapers everything looked completely different from the sky than it did when they’d escaped the facility the last time.

How fucked up was it to be nostalgic of a past, which was still technically the future, that was arguably worse than the present you were living? Or was it? Thomas still had Newt, then. And Minho. But there had been so many more dead…

But weren’t there almost as many dead now, if he factored in the Right Arm? Was that the price to pay? Did the universe decide that only _so many_ could survive this hellhole, and if Thomas saved one person than another would have to die? Who would be the cost? Who all was he willing to sacrifice in order to keep Newt alive?

But Thomas knew the answer to that.

Anyone.

He would sacrifice anyone and everyone if it meant keeping Newt alive. And what kind of monstrosity did that make Thomas? Wasn’t that the same reasoning that Ava operated off of? If you sacrifice the many to save one, or to save several, did that make it worth it? But if it was an equal exchange then that made it so Thomas had to exchange only _one_ life so that Newt could live. He could do that, right? Thomas thought back to the six guards he’d shot in cold blood, and realized he already had.

“You won’t see anything from the window, you know,” Eva said. She was staring at a small screen near the flight controls and had her face screwed up in concentration. “The sand will have covered everything by now, your best bet is the scan I’m running.”

Thomas ran his hand down his face and then back up through his hair while he trudged to the cockpit manned by Dan and Eva. “What scan?” he asked.

“Think a metal detector, but it gives a clear image of everything it sees. Well, a clear image of the shape it sees, at least. Rumor has it they were working on a way to cross this with your standard x-ray beam, so you could have a complete picture before—"

Eva stopped talking at the uninterested look on Thomas’s face, and her entire personality seemed to sag in response. He should have felt guilty, under different circumstances he might have been interested and actually liked her, but she worked for WCKD—Thomas was done trusting people from there. Which meant no attachment if he could help it. Thomas forcefully kept himself from thinking about Teresa, about her radio silence since her ‘surgery’ and whether or not she played a role in Janson’s rebellion.

But she’d chosen the Gladers of Janson last time, hadn’t she?

Eva gathered herself and spoke again, this time briefly, “If there’s a helicopter under the sand we fly over, the scan will find it.”

“You’re sure?” Ben asked. He’d come up behind Thomas while Eva spoken, and positioned himself so that his eyes were about two inches from the screen. “What would it even look like?”

“A helicopter, dumbass,” Dan said.

Thomas tuned out their bickering and zoned in on the screen. The vague, amorphous shapes flew across it almost faster than Thomas could figure out what they were; how were they supposed to find a helicopter in this mess?

Eva flew them in a grid pattern, searching, heedlessly searching. It’d been hours, soon they would run out of fuel, and Thomas could practically feel the room at large wondering if Thomas had finally cracked. He hadn’t, not yet, but he couldn’t give up. Could never give up, would have them out searching on foot if he had to. He was preparing to make that announcement when Dan yelled for Eva to land.

“I swear to god, we just passed a helicopter, just fucking land with the engines pointed that that spot right there to blow the sand away,” Dan pointed to a blob on the screen and Eva rushed to do as he asked.

Sure enough, Dan had been right. It was a helicopter. But it was steaming and covered in hardened sand a charcoal and when they dug out the inside…. All they’d found were bodies. Ten of them. Possibilities ran through Thomas’s head almost faster than he could recognize them, each one worse than the last.

“How many of us were on each plane?” Frypan asked quietly from where he stood staring at the bodies they’d unearthed with horror. “Do any of us know?”

No one answered. No one knew.

There was nothing, nothing at all to distinguish the look, or even the gender, of the melted and black bodies in front of them. At first, they’d though that the individuals with melted metal on them were the guards, but then someone found some of the standard aloe and medical supplies passed out to all Gladers on the hip of someone holding a broken gun. All they knew for sure was that the pilot wasn’t one of theirs, and that somehow, their people had fought back. How else could they have had a gun?

At first? Thomas had looked at every corpse and known immediately that none of them were Newt. He’d been positive. But the longer he stared? The more he doubted. Did that one have blond hair showing? What about the angle of the leg, that could have been a broken leg once, right? Or was it the one with the gun? Newt would have found a way to fight back, he knew that, Newt would never give up that easily…

Hot tears made tracks in the sand down all of their faces, but what could they do?

“What…” Dmitri said, or tried to say. His voice choked off into soft cries but they all knew what he was asking.

“Bury them,” Thomas whispered. “We… we don’t know who, but, they… Jesus. They _deserve_ the best we can give them.” If one of them was Newt, or Minho, or Alby or... any of them, Thomas couldn’t live with himself if he’d just left the bodies there in the open. They only thing they knew for certain was that none of them were Chuck—they were all too tall.

They buried the bodies with somber faces and battered hearts; Thomas knew they all shared the same thought, asked the same question.

Why had this one crashed? Was it from the storm? Rebellion? And if it was the storm… how many more crashed planes full of their friends were they about to find?

That thought stayed with them while they loaded up the Berg again and set out to search for more. More what? Death?

 

 

They found the next one quickly, and unearthed it just the same, but what they found was… different. Unexpected. There were bodies, yes, but they weren’t burned. And they didn’t belong to and Gladers, but rather to Janson’s men. They’d been stripped of some of their clothing, their weapons, and the helicopter was barren of anything that could have been supplies. Four guards, one pilot. Was it the same ratio on every helicopter? Had they buried five of their people a few miles behind, or had they buried more?

The blades on the top of the machine were badly damaged, like they’d been shot at by something—but that made absolutely zero sense. No matter what way you looked at it, shooting this plane down just didn’t make sense.

“So… who did the shooting? And where is everyone?” Ben asked.

Thomas shook his head. “Either Janson’s men shot at the plane once Gladers took over… or, we shot at it? But, no. No that doesn’t make sense. They probably tried to down this one like the one we found back there—Gladers took over, so they tried to take them out. Unsuccessfully, by the looks of it. As for where they went... let’s see if we can find any more of them.”

They did.

But, if anything, that find was more perplexing that the last. It was in near perfect condition, save for bloodstains smeared everywhere that were discernable only because Thomas was intimately familiar with what blood did to sand on a solid surface.

But there were no guards. No Gladers. No supplies. Nothing. Nothing at all. Except… there was something.

Thomas moved towards the cockpit and felt something dangerous, world ending, and horrible build in his chest. Hope. It was there, tied to the armrest of the pilot’s seat, that Thomas found a piece of fabric.

He untied it with shaking fingers and ignored the questions being asked behind him in favor of examining it with a hyper focus that let him take in every detail. Every spec of blood, of dirt, every wrinkle. It was a shirt sleeve, one that had been ripped off, horribly, sloppily, at the shoulder seam and tied around the left arm of the chair.

_Newt._

He’d made it, he’d taken control of the plane and landed safely, he was out.

Thomas laughed and scared everyone before he realized that not everyone would know that a mangy shirt sleeve was fantastic news.

“But where did they _go_ , Thomas? That storm hit, they only had about an hour’s head start from us, where could they have gone that they would have been safe from it?” Hans demanded.

_A shopping mall, old, clearly lived in. A generator, light. Screams. Cranks, cranks everywhere, had to get out, need to get out—_

“THOMAS!”

Ben’s face was up close and personal to Thomas’s and his hands were strong where they gripped Thomas’s shoulders tight. Ben looked worried, and Thomas couldn’t blame him. Flashbacks. Thomas supposed he’d be more prone to them out here, in Scorch, when the bad had _truly_ started to happen to them.

“Sorry,” Thomas whispered. “Sorry, man, I’m good.”

“You whacked, Thomas?” Dan asked softly. Everyone was concerned, uncertain. Thomas really needed to get his shit together and stop going hysterical.

“Yeah, I’m… memories. Not fun ones,” Thomas said. He was tempted to leave it at that, but he needed them all to _understand_. “Newt knows the Scorch, okay? We’ve lived it already. This close to the ruins they could have hidden… literally anywhere. At all. And those places they hid would be filled with a lot of things worse than a sandstorm… but, again, this sleeve?” Thomas waved it in the air. “Is a signal from Newt. He made it. He’ll take care of everyone who got out, get them safe. All we gotta do is find them.”

“That’s gonna have to wait, Thomas,” Eva said from the back.

Thomas turned his gaze on her and raised an eyebrow in question.

“Fuel. We’ve only just got enough to get back to Base,” she explained. “If we don’t go there now then you won’t make rendezvous, and your collateral is as good as drained.”

Thomas closed his eyes in resignation, held the sleeve tight in his fingers, and motioned for her to lead the way.

 

They were almost back to the Facility when Zart finally stopped hovering and instead approached Thomas timidly. Zart was a good guy, Thomas knew that. Kind, calm, understanding. Thomas didn’t blame him for his outburst, for the judgement.

Half the reason Thomas planned to keep on killing people was so that people like Zart never had to.

“What does the sleeve mean?” Zart asked softly. He motioned to where Thomas twirled the fabric through his fingers, worrying at it as he worried over Newt and the others. “How do you know its him?”

Thomas couldn’t stop the small smile if he’d tried. Memories, glimpses, blinked in his mind. Six months hunting for Minho was a long time, but no time was more memorable. Long nights of planning, injuries, odd moments where Thomas had almost understood when he and Newt had the potential to be.

“He’d had a bad day, once. A real bad one, while he hunted for Minho,” Thomas explained. “I did something dumb to try and cheer him up, and he never really let me forget it.”

Zart nodded but didn’t ask anything more. Thomas was grateful. Newt wasn’t out of danger yet, none of them were, and they still had a lot that needed to be done. This wasn’t the time for old memories.

The Berg docked and they unloaded; Thomas took his time tying the sleeve around his palm like a bandage while he marched straight to the medical bay to check in on those he’d left behind, Ben hot on his heels, when he was intercepted.

“Sir?” a guard asked. “You’ve uh, you’ve got a call waiting for you?”

Thomas stared at him and willed him to go away.

“It’s, uh.” The guard gulped and glanced down at the gun Thomas held in his palm. “It’s Assistant Director Janson?

His quirked his eyebrow. “He got to keep his title?” Thomas asked, voice low.

“What? No!” The guard, his name tag read Tanner, stammered. “No, I mean, uh—”

“Just… take me to a call point,” Thomas said. He didn’t have the time for this.

There was one only a few halls away from the medical bay, and sooner than Thomas would have liked he was one again staring at the Rat Man.

“Calling to surrender?” Thomas asked.

Ben snorted.

“Surrender? Now why would I do that when I’ve got all of your lovely little friends here to keep me company?” Janson sneered. His voice was like oil on water—slick, beady, and treacherous.

“All my friends, huh? You sure about that?”

“Now, Thomas… you should know me better than that. You tried to call my bluff once before, and we all know what happened to your friend then, don’t we?”

Thomas’s attention finally peaked against his permission, and he hated the way it made Janson smirk at him, like he’d won a small victory over him.

“There, see, was showing interest so difficult?” Janson mocked. “Now we saw how quickly he caught the virus the last time he was so close to an airborne infestation… how long before he lasts this time? You can save, him, Thomas.”

“Yeah, see,” Thomas began, “I’ve heard that line before. Last I checked you weren’t big on philanthropy.”

Thomas couldn’t believe it. Janson was still pretending like he had Newt. Like he was in complete control, like Thomas had no idea that _any_ of his people had escaped Janson’s vile little paws.

“Well, I suppose in his case you’d only be saving him from a slower death,” Janson said, his voice a pale imitation of mourning. “But the others? The _child_? Them, you could save.”

But if Janson would dare to lie about Newt, he could lie about Chuck. As a matter of fact, they hadn’t even been able to finish checking for the rest of the helicopters; for all Thomas knew, Janson had _no one_ and this was the best he could come up with to bait Thomas into doing something stupid.

Thomas ran his thumb over the fabric he’s wrapped around his knuckles like a lifeline and took a deep breath. Thomas wasn’t going to fall for it, not this time.

“Tell ya what, Janson,” Thomas moved his hand over to the ‘End Call’ switch. “You tell Newt said I’ll see him soon.”

Thomas ended the call and smiled.

“So?” Ben asked.

“He’s bluffing. And we’re gonna call it.”


	9. Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt’s Journey, Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I make geography do what I want it to do, so that things can happen when they need to. Just go with it lol

Questions.

Everyone asked too many bloody questions, it was ridiculous.

“Why did you kill them?”

“Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“Are you _actually_ insane?”

Sand, sand, everywhere. He honestly hadn’t missed the sand, truth be told. Already it was trying to creep into his boots and under his socks—when it finally managed to infiltrate them then it would start to itch, to leave these awful rashes that were raised and tempted you to actually scratch your feet.

“Why the fuck did you rip off your sleeve? You look like a slinthead.”

“Where are we going?”

“Why did you shoot at them?!”

That on its own wasn’t so horrible, of course, but Newt’s feet were unbearably ticklish and the moment he tried to scratch them on a bit of stone by a fire he’d burst into a fit of laughter. He’d be sat there by the fire looking like a tit as he moved his toes against a bit of rock and giggled to himself; Thomas and Frypan always gave him shit about it, but no one was worse than Brenda.

 “What’s happening?”

“Hey, twig! Maybe you could stop ignoring us for five seconds and answer a goddamn question!”

Twig? He’d never heard Harriet use _that_ one before.

Newt stopped his walking and spun to tilt his head at a fuming, and afraid, Rachel. Of course, it was only natural that different girls would favor different words—Chuckie used ‘klunk’ far too often and Gally referred to everyone except for Ben as a shank no matter his mood—but he’d never considered what their other words might be. What was with their fascination with wood-based terms, anyway? Hadn’t they been damn near buried under a mountain of snow?

“Hello? Earth to lizard boy? Take a picture it’ll last longer.”

Newt exhaled in a short, staccato way that was almost a sigh before he rolled his eyes and turned back around. He continued his march forward and then began to answer every question they’d asked, in order:

“I killed them because they pissed me off, I learned to fight like that while attempting to kill _others_ that pissed me off, and no, Minho, I am not actually insane,” Newt paused to take a breath and ignored the indignant spluttering of the others as they realized that Newt had in fact heard them, he’d just ignored them. “I ripped off my sleeve to send a message I don’t feel like explaining the meaning behind, we are on our way to meet up with the other helicopter that landed, which _I shot at_ to help slow down so they wouldn’t crash and burn like the other one did; I was _helping **,**_ you twit. If you need me to explain the laws of aerodynamics and propulsion for you later so you can understand the exact theory behind it, fine, otherwise shut up about it already.”

A moment passed in silence before Newt decided that he did, in fact, need to address one more thing. He stopped so that he could turn and judgmentally stare back at Rachel, “And for the record, ‘stick’? A newt is a type of salamander, not a bloody lizard. If you’re going to try and insult me at least do it properly.”

Rachel’s mouth fell open and then closed several times before she was able to form a retort, “Well at least I had the presence of mind to check on your friend! Or have you forgotten that Minho was laying in a hospital bed for the past couple of days?”

Bugger.

The chit was right.

Newt had been so wrapped up in his rage over being taken, at being separated from Thomas, and then his sorrow for the friends they’d just lost that he hadn’t even spared a moment’s thought for whether or not Minho could even keep up with the pace Newt was setting.

“Rachel don’t you bring me into this,” Minho begged.

Newt could feel the shame stabbing his gut with every breath he took, and he bowed his head. What was _wrong_ with him? Yes, getting back to Thomas was important, but that didn’t mean the rest of them didn’t matter. Exactly the opposite. They mattered even more because Thomas wasn’t here to lead them, it was all on Newt. He felt the phantom tapping against his pulse, of Thomas passing the lead on to him, as both a warning and a benediction. They were Newt’s responsibility, and he was failing already.

“No, mate, she’s right,” Newt said softly. “I just…”

Newt didn’t know what to say, how to apologize, how to explain. He looked at all of their faces in turn: Rachel, Minho, Winston, Jake. Three of them looked as though they understood, but they didn’t. Not at all. Every day Newt battled with the disconnect between this version of his friends and the version he used to know. Of the subtle changes that said they were _other._ And because of it Newt allowed himself to focus the entirety of his being on Thomas, who was of course focused on Teresa, and that wasn’t right.

This was still Winston.

This was still Jake.

_This was still Minho._

The same Minho Newt had let a city burn for, had died to save—the same Minho who had once saved Newt. He needed to wake up, to get his priorities focused. The goal wasn’t ‘get back to Thomas’; the goal was ‘save all we can’, and that meant Newt was going to need to do some things a bit differently.

“We get it, Newt,” Winston tried to explain. “You’re busy juggling timelines and trying to predict the next move, especially now that the Rat Man is fucking with everything. We aren’t taking it personally.”

Winston. Winston in the Scorch again.

“You were given a shot by Thomas and Clint, yeah?” Newt asked him. Newt had two spares on him, hidden in a strap he’d fixed to his thigh under his trousers, for an emergency or in case the shot didn’t take the first time, but he preferred not to be forced to use them. You never know when it might be needed.

Winston nodded, “Yeah, they got me before we left the Glade. I should be fine.”

Good. One less worry, he hoped. Newt turned his gaze to Minho, who stood proudly, and who didn’t appear to be favoring his hip at all. Newt wasn’t completely surprised given how quickly Minho had escaped his bonds and jumped a guard earlier, but Rachel was right. He had to be sure.

“Are you alright, mate? You can do this?” Newt asked softly, unintentionally echoing the words that Minho had once asked Newt in a darkened Maze corridor. Minho met his eyes, and Newt noticed them soften just a touch at the reminder of their shared past. Clearly it wasn’t only Newt struggling to come to terms with the differences between versions of a person. Newt wasn’t exactly the person Minho had once known, anymore.

“It would help if I had some idea of what I was agreeing to, but yea. I got this, you stupid shank,” Minho said. Out of the corner of his eye Newt saw Rachel roll her eyes—either at Minho’s claim about his health or the slang, he wasn’t sure.

“Good that,” Newt said. “I’ll give a proper explanation once we meet up with the others, yeah? Don’t wanna have to go through it twice. But we’ll get there, meet up, gather supplies, and then have a bit of a chat on where we go from here. We’ve got to move, though.” Newt stopped to gesture at the cloud formation beginning to creep over the horizon. “See that? That means a sand storm’s brewin’, and believe you me, we don’t wanna be caught up in it.”

“Oh, more sand. Joy,” Jake deadpanned.

Newt snorted.

 

 

It took another ten minutes of walking before they reached the site where the other helicopter hit the ground none to gently, but thankfully with the explosion. A shriek filled the air—it came from Newt’s left, and in the blink of an eye Newt saw Rachel sprint off down the dune to jump up into Harriet’s arms in a wild hug. She then hugged yet another female, one that Newt hadn’t met before, in the space of time it took the boys to join her.

From what Newt could hear over the squealing the new girl’s name was ‘Miyo’ or something like it, but Newt was too focused on scanning the faces of the boys gathered round—Dominic, Alex, and Arthur all rushed forward to pull the other Gladers into relieved and shaking hugs.

Newt patted them all on the back and tried to figure out if he was disappointed or relieved at who he saw. Not that he valued any of their lives over the others, not really, but somehow, he’d found himself in yet another impossible situation. He didn’t know who all had been taken in the first place, he didn’t know who was in the helicopter that exploded, and he’d no idea who was still on their way to the Last City.

How could he grieve? How could he plan? How could he decide what to do next? He’d gone from being in a position where he had all of the information to having absolutely none of it—how the bloody hell had Thomas done this time after time? Create a plan from literally nothing and somehow drag their sorry asses through to the end? Eventually Newt tuned back in to the conversation happening around him.

“We need to head out to the crash site, see if there’s anyone—”

“No, we don’t have time, and nobody survived that,” Newt interrupted. It was only after he spoke that perhaps interrupting _Harriet_ was not the wisest move he could have made.

“Excuse you?” Harriet responded in a dangerous voice as she got into Newt’s space. He didn’t have time for this, though from the way she was acting it was clear that Sonya had been taken.

Again.

“Harriet, slim it. We’ve got bigger things to worry about right now than who was on the one that crashed, alright? Unless you think you’ll be able to rescue your girlfriend after you’re done in from a sandstorm.” Again, Newt gestured to the building cloud formation that never meant anything good in the Scorch. If they were lucky they could make it to a building before it hit, and if they were even luckier that building wouldn’t be stuff full of Cranks.

“Of course. You’re the other future boy. And I’m assuming you think that puts _you_ in charge?” Harriet exclaimed—Newt took this opportunity to realized that she’d taken one of the weapons from the body of a guard. Because of course she had. “I’m not going anywhere you say to go, not until I check and see if—”

A loud, booming, blast came from the direction of the billowing smoke of the crash site, and then the smoke increased ten-fold. The fire had reached the fuel reserves. Newt closed his eyes and sent out a prayer to whatever deity might exist for the souls of his friends trapped on board. He hoped they died quickly, felt no pain, and found peace somewhere.

“No!” Harriet screamed. She made to sprint in the direction of the waving plume of smoke, but Newt grabbed her arm and held her back. Harriet turned to try and swing at him, but Newt deflected her easily. Even through the tears for the lost that gathering in his eye lashes Newt was able to see her next move from a mile away.

He supposed it helped that Harriet was the one who taught him hand-to-hand combat in the first place, along with Vince.

Soon enough Newt had both of Harriet’s arms locked in his hands and his face only inches from hers.

 “Do not make the mistake of thinking you’re the only one who’s just lost someone, understand?” Newt whispered. “There is _one_ person you fear might have just died, when we know for certain that a number of _my people_ did. I do not make the decision to move on lightly, you realize?”

“Harriet, c’mon, she’s strong. She’ll be alright,” the lean girl with shining black hair that Newt assumed was ‘Miyo’ gently extracted Harriet from Newt’s hold and brought her over to stand by Rachel.

The mood was somber, grave, and expectant. All faces were turned in Newt’s direction, and Newt couldn’t help but wish Thomas was there to take charge. Newt was ready for a break now.

“What now, shuckface?” Minho asked. His arms were crossed, and he was leaning against the side of the helicopter, because it was Minho and he always had to be leaning against something. The sight of it was comforting and allowed Newt to take a deep breath and make a snap decision on a plan.

“First, we need to get out of the open, yeah? All of the action out here serves as a bloody beacon, which not what you want when you’re trying not to be found. Not to mention that storm. You don’t wanna be caught up in that when it hits,” Newt realized he was basically thinking aloud at that point and stopped. That’s not how he needed to do this. He needed to seem like he knew what he was bloody doing, not like he was fumbling around at straws. “So, we move. Get out of range, and then we get to the mountains. There’s people there that’ll be able to help us.”

“Help us with what, exactly?” Alex asked.  “Are we going after them?”

“Shouldn’t we be getting back to the Facility? To Thomas?” Rachel asked.

_Thomas._

“Not exactly, we’re gathering our allies. And we’ve no need to go back to Thomas, he will find us. Always does,” Newt said.

“You’ve got a habit of explaining things without actually giving us any information,” Winston said. “You know that, right?”

Newt ran his hands down his face and groaned. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me explain things properly as we work, will you?”

“Work doing…. What?” The random girl asked.

“I’m sorry, what was your name again?” Newt asked her. She looked taken aback for a moment before responding.

“I thought you were from the future? Shouldn’t you know that already?”

Newt bit his tongue to keep from answering that, he wasn’t sure that the chit would want to hear it. He knew how much it messed with Alby to hear that he hadn’t survived, would it do the same to her? “Erm, uh, let’s just say we never crossed paths and leave it at that.”

Rachel looked between the two of them with a sad sort of understanding and interceded on Newt’s behalf. “Her name is Miyoko, Miyo for short. She was in our Maze.”

“Right, well, Miyo, we need to gather every bit of supplies we either might need later, or don’t want used against us. Harriet, you’re on weapons—or, wait, you haven’t really had weapons training yet have you? Or combat… blimey, alright, uh…”

Disconnect. Disconnect between people he knew and the ones in front of them. Would Harriet even _want_ to learn how to fight, or was that something that only happened out of necessity? Newt would offer it, then, not force it. Offer it and see where that went—later. Once they had time, and help.

“Scratch that. Harriet, you find the medical supplies. I’ll gather weapons and ammunition and make them safe for travel. Everyone grabs clothes, food, water bottles especially. The Scorch is unforgiving. As we work, I’ll talk.”

It took a moment, but then there was a flurry of movement as the group got to work. And, as promised, Newt told them all he knew from before, and what the plan was going forward.

 

 

Thirty minutes, roughly, since Rachel got them safely to the ground and they were finally making their way towards the ruined city. He tried to mentally map out the distance between them and the nearest shelter, to calculate the time it would take them, but all of the numbers he was coming up with weren’t good ones. Not good at all, not with how quickly the clouds were moving up to greet them.

He had them moving as fast as they could over the sand, pushing harder and harder with every time Newt glanced up at the sky. No one spoke save for soft curses whenever they sunk too deep in the sand or lost their footing. The tiny devil particles already filled Newt’s socks to his dismay, but he’d cut off his other sleeve to form a scarf earlier, so at least it stayed free of his mouth and nostrils. It hadn’t been long before the others had copied his idea.

“Faster,” Newt barked out. The sky darkened quickly, and the wind was beginning to make the sand spin around in light circles on the ground before them. It wouldn’t be long before they were caught up, which could _not_ happen, not without shelter.

The sun beat down hard on their backs as they ran, stumbled, across the dunes. They were nearing the outskirts of the ruins when Newt saw it and skidded to a halt. It couldn’t be. Not here.

But it wasn’t—This truck wasn’t the same, not by a long shot. It was larger, for one thing, and the paint was chipped off in all of the wrong places. But this vehicle didn’t look like the others, not quite as beaten down, definitely more recently used than the husks that surrounded it. But Newt still felt waves of memories crashing into him from another life—dreams, visions of a man who’d died a pointless death, long nights full of terror and longing.

Why was there a truck here? One that seemed operational?

The answer to that was found upon closer inspection—the tools sitting in the covered bed belonged to scavengers, people who hunted city ruins for things that could be brought back and sold it for whatever they could. They’d had a few brushes with them from time to time; never very pleasant people, but that was to be expected when you dealt with Cranks and the long empty Scorch as often as they did. There was one thing, though, that you could also count on the slippery people for.

They always had enough fuel to get back home.

“Newt?” Minho asked. “Shouldn’t we be running?”

“Maybe not, gimme a sec,” Newt muttered.

He checked the tank by dropping in a thin strip of cloth, and sure enough, there was a few gallons inside at the very least. Enough to get them out of the range of the storm—and the fewer miles they had to walk, the better.

“Alright, load up. Cab can hold four, and the truck beds got a lid on it so those in the back won’t even have to deal with the Sun,” Newt said. He dropped his pack to the ground and limped to pop the hood. “No idea how far off he went, but if he sees the storm he’ll be back in a hurry. But this is a gift, trust me.”

Memory. Memory after memory plagued Newt, but none of them were the one he’d needed. Which wires did he need? What order did he do it in? He couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t focus, and he needed to do this right. Newt closed his eyes and let muscle memory guide him—except was it really muscle memory when this body had never preformed the actions? The roar of the engine coming to life was answer enough, and Newt couldn’t help his smile.

“Uh, dude?” Minho asked. “Where the shuck did you learn how to hotwire a car?”

Newt shook his head to free himself from the ghosts of the past, “An old friend.”

“Did that same friend teach you how to drive?”

Newt had to laugh, “Just be glad it wasn’t Frypan trying to teach me, yeah? C’mon, let’s go.”

 

They escaped the storm. Newt saw it raging in his rearview and tried to hold in the breath of relief; there was no relief in the Scorch. Never. Just when you felt it, it would be ripped from you and you’d regret dropping your guard. Not this time.

Never again.

Few a few hours Newt sped off in the direction of the mountains, tracing the route from images seared into his mind all those long months ago, until he felt his eyelids begin to droop. He was too exhausted to try and teach someone else how to drive, that could be handled in the morning, but for now they needed to stop, to rest.

A quick word to the others and Newt pulled to a stop. The night was dark, the air was cool, and Newt was asleep in the driver’s seat before he even registered people climbing out of the truck to stretch and relieve themselves.

 

Morning punched Newt in the face with hot, stuffy, sunlight. There was a body curled up on Newt’s shoulder, and in that quiet place between sleep and wakefulness Newt allowed his heart to think it was Thomas.

It wasn’t.

It was Minho.

Newt slowly slid out from under him and escaped the Truck to stretch and take care of other things that needed his attention. Like food, water, and taking a piss. Not necessarily in that order. It wasn’t until after he’d dodged around the forms of those who’d decided to sleep outside, found a spot, taken care of his business, and tucked himself back into his trousers that Newt realized where exactly they were.

He knew these rocks. He knew their shape, what it was like to sleep surrounded by them.

How far they could walk, and yet they would still hear the gunshot echo from within them.

_Winston, pale, shaking, his insides turning black and oozing, green slime dripping from his mouth, Newt giving him the weapon and walking away, leaving him there to die, to die, to…_

“No!” Newt screamed.

And then he sprinted in their direction, mind too caught up in the past to realize that Winston was fine, only just jerked away by Newt’s shout. But it didn’t matter. Newt was too far gone, reliving it all over again.

He didn’t hear his friends scrambling to their feet, couldn’t hear them calling his name, couldn’t feel the cool morning sun on his skin or the faint breeze—all he saw was the hot desert flame of a noonday sun, of a decision that had haunted him since the moment he’d made it. But he hadn’t heard the gunshot yet, it wasn’t too late to turn back, to stop him, to convince Winston to keep fighting.

“Winston! No!” Newt yelled, out of breath, as he rounded the corner to where he should see Winston still laying on the dirt between the stone, and for a moment he did.

He was there, staring down at his friend, his brother, hearing him say that he needed to move on, to leave him.

And then it wasn’t Winston, it was Newt begging for death. Begging to be released, to be set free from the poison churning in his veins.

Newt collapsed to the ground in his haste to get away from the image and sobbed at it all. He couldn’t take it, not anymore. He couldn’t live through this again, any of this. His heart was stabbing with every beat and the air in his lungs turned to ash and dust and choked and clawed—his bones turned to wax, and he felt himself begin to turn all over again.

Was that noise coming from the Newt on the ground, or himself? No, there wasn’t a Newt on the ground anymore, it was Winston—

But not.

This Winston was fine, although afraid.

Although entirely too understanding.

Eventually Newt could understand what he was saying, “Calm down man, I’m fine, I’m right here, It’s alright…”

Words that Newt had wanted to hear any of the millions of time he’d relived this moment in time in his dreams, but whenever he woke he was met only with Frypan or Thomas.

Except for now.

Newt surged forward and pulled Winston in tight and sobbed and begged for forgiveness for a crime he hadn’t yet committed. It didn’t matter that they had a crowd, that it probably looked like Newt was losing his mind, none of it mattered. Eventually Winston pulled away, when Newt’s heaving sobs began to slow, and asked the question Newt knew couldn’t be avoided.

“What happened here?”

So, Newt told him. Told them all.

The Crank attack in the mall, dragging Winston’s body across the desert until he couldn’t anymore, until he began to turn. Until he’d begged for death and Newt had given it to him. What happened next, newt wasn’t expecting.

“Thank you,” Winston said.

“What?” Newt asked, unable to believe his ears.

“Seriously. I… I saw what the Cranks were like, when we entered the Facility. I don’t want to become that, ever. Not ever, you hear me?” Winston explained. He put his hands on Newt’s shoulders and looked directly into his eyes. “I know I’m not him, not the other me. I don’t know how much merit my words have, you know? But thank you, for him. For letting him go. You saved him, man, you get that right? You said you became one of those things, you know what it’s like….”

Emotion went through newt in giant, sweeping waves. It soothed as much as it hurt, and he somehow knew that this wouldn’t be a nightmare he would have to live through again any time soon.

“So, thank you. For him.”

Newt nodded and wiped his eyes before pulling Winston in once more. Things were fucked up, _Newt_ was fucked up, but they would be okay.

Eventually, they’d be okay.


	10. Shock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas tries his hand at negotiating. Again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm currently working 12 hour shifts at work guys, forgive me for typos, I swear I'll come back and fix them.

“Would you hate me for saying that I honestly was hoping you’d show up with everyone in tow and we could just… go to paradise already?” Clint asked.

The look on his face when Thomas had showed up without the other Gladers was damning and full of sorrow. It made Thomas’s stomach churn just to see it and made his temporary victory over Janson seem to turn to dust. It only got worse when they told him about the downed helicopter and the people they’d buried in an unmarked grave, lost to seas of sand and likely never to be found again.

“I mean… Obviously you couldn’t tell but,” Clint stammered out. “I just. Jeff? With his skin or hair maybe, you could’ve known if he…?”

Thomas shook his head and watched the battle of relief and fear play out over the med-jack’s face. It was one Thomas knew all too well, that niggling fear of ‘what if’? Just because they didn’t know who had died, didn’t mean it wasn’t the person you feared for most, and if it wasn’t them, that meant you were relieved at the death of someone else you cared for. Or what if the crash was the kinder death? What if they had been taken to a fate worse than a quick end?

Thomas looked away from the maelstrom in Clint’s eyes and stared instead at his left palm, where Newt’s sleeve was tied carefully. Life was so fragile, so fleeting, that _when_ Thomas found Newt again there would need to be a conversation that was perhaps long overdue. A conversation that should have happened in the Scorch, sitting back to back in the bed of Jorge’s truck. A question Thomas could have, should have, asked a million times—and a million times he’d held his tongue instead.

But not anymore.

There was never time, but there wouldn’t be if they didn’t make it. Yes, there was a war going on, but what was the war worth if he didn’t have anything to fight for?

The hollowness in Clint’s face reminded Thomas of the way he’d felt wandering the beach alone at night, when he’d stared out at the waves and recited Newt’s Letter over and over and over again in his head. Of the pain and doubt that had led him out into the storm in the first place—the storm that had given Thomas a second chance, a chance that he risked wasting with every passing moment.

When Thomas looked up to meet Clint’s eyes once more, he found a steely resolve that Thomas could feel inside his soul, could see echoed in Ben and in himself. The beginning of a warrior, or a person willing to accomplish the impossible, for the right cause.

“Alright, so,” Clint said. “Updates. Aris and Justin are awake, they’re in the mess with everyone else. Said they just got knocked out in the fight—and before you ask, no, Aris can’t reach Rachel. Poor shank nearly gave himself a nosebleed tryin’ earlier.”

“What about the kids already in suspended animation? They still alright?” Thomas asked.

Clint snorted.

“Rianne took it upon _herself_ to make sure that part of the deal was kept,” Clint explained. “Apparently most of her Clearing was taken already, they’re all strung up now. She’s pissed.”

“’Rianne’?” Ben asked, Thomas nodded that the question double for himself as well. Clint couldn’t seem to help his grin.

“Tiny girl? Deceptively feisty? Remember her?”

“Waif girl…” Thomas responded quietly, using his own personal nickname for her.

“Uh yeah, sure,” Clint chuckled. “Just do me a favor and don’t let her hear you call her that, okay? Or if you do at least make sure I’m close enough to watch.”

Thomas rolled his eyes and gestured for Clint to continue. They were on borrowed time already; any moment Ava or her henchmen would catch up to Thomas and demand his end of the bargain, but when that happened he was at least _hoping_ to have something resembling a full plan instead of the roughly eleven percent of one he was currently operating with.

“Thomas,” said an older, overly sweet voice behind him. “So glad to see you returned safely.”

Eleven percent of a plan it was, then.

“Ava, I would say it’s a pleasure, but it’d be a lie,” Thomas said. This type of back and forth between the matronly woman shouldn’t have been as fun as it was but he couldn’t help it—Thomas was so used to fighting with weapons that at this point to fight with words was a relief. “What do you want?”

Ava raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow and tilted her head, “We had a bargain, Thomas.”

“And how am I supposed to know if you kept up your end?” he asked.

“Wasn’t that the point of leaving behind this charming young man?” Ava asked. She looked Clint up and down the way a butcher might eye a heifer at an auction, and Thomas motioned for Ben to move in front of the med-jack.

“Yeah, you don’t get to look at him like that,” Thomas said. He moved forward to grab Ava’s arm and physically turn her so that she faced the other way. “Or anyone, at all. Ever.”

“Thomas, unhand me or—”

“Or nothing. You’re gonna take me and Ben here on a nice little tour of the Facility, show us behind all the fancy doors with their pesky little locks, and prove to me that you’re not a backstabbing bitch in this timeline, good that?”

“Good—”

“Excellent!” chimed Ben, who caught on quickly to the tactic Alby used on Janson what felt like years ago. “I love tours.”

Together Thomas and Ben steered Ava and her guards from the medical room and out into the hallway, leaving a bewildered Clint behind them. Bewildered was better than dead, though, and anyone that Ava took an interest in typically didn’t enjoy the rest of their very short lives.

“Let’s start with the dormitories, shall we?” Thomas suggested with a crazed smile.

 

 

They checked the loading bay, the medical bay, the dormitories, the cafeteria, the recreation rooms; anywhere that Thomas could think to check, he was shown. Part of him was honestly trying to ensure that Ava had truly kept her bit of the bargain, but mostly it was so that Thomas could try like hell to come up with a better plan than the one he had.

The one that would allow Thomas more time to stall, to achieve what he needed, to find Newt, but would eventually come back to Thomas having to give up more information than he wanted to. And Newt would kill him when he found out, of course. But that was neither here nor there considering Newt was ready to kill him for just about any decision that Thomas made, ever. Despite the fact that this time Thomas truly _was_ being more careful.

Stalling didn’t work forever, though.

“Anywhere else you’d like to see?” Ava drawled. “Or are we done with charade? You know me, Thomas. I don’t break my word.”

“Well considering you destroyed any positive memory I would have ever had about you when you swiped everything else, I’m gonna go ahead and say that I have no idea if you’d keep your word or not,” Thomas snapped.

Like a mantra in his head Thomas had to keep repeating to himself that she was the lesser of two evils, that she was _necessary_.

And Thomas would always do whatever was necessary.

“Take me to them,” he said quietly, before Ava had a chance to respond. For a moment it looked as though she was about to argue, or to deny that she knew exactly where it was Thomas wanted to go; Thomas squinted his eyes slightly and moved his head as if to say, ‘we both know you’re smarter than that’.

Ava nodded.

Each loud clack of her heels on the tiles was a hammer to the nail inside his ribs—last time he’d left these kids here to face their fate, to be drained. He’d gotten out only those he’d needed, had personally cared for. In the end, when the only ones you take care of and protect are your own, it means they’re the only ones left to fight. And where had that mindset gotten him?

Alone, afraid, and without an army.

The Right Arm was gone, obliterated, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t an army to be created.

When they reached the door to the room of kids in suspended animation, Thomas found that it was wide open. He turned and gave Ava a look, questioning.

“Rianne… insisted,” Ava explained delicately.

Once he got closer he understood the use of delicate tone. Thomas supposed that by ‘insisted’ she actually meant ‘took something large and heavy and bashed the door open permanently’, in which case Thomas had a whole new appreciation for Clint’s warning of not to refer to her as ‘waif girl’ to her face.

Although some part of him wanted to do it anyway, if only because her reaction was sure to be explosive.

He and Ben shared a look, and a smirk, before they entered. Thomas didn’t miss the fact that Ben seemed intent on keeping himself between the guards and Thomas at all times; at this point he wasn’t sure if Ben was under orders from Gally, Newt, or Minho, however there was also the chance that Ben decided to play bodyguard all on his own.

Thomas wouldn’t interfere, but he hoped like hell that it didn’t end up biting Ben in the ass later. He didn’t know what he would do if something happened to Ben while he was trying to protect Thomas, how he would live with himself.

How he would break it to Gally, who he _would_ find, somehow.

The inside of the room was just as chilling, as creepy, as Thomas remembered it being—with one exception, less people. The bodies hanging from the ceiling were nearly a third of the number Thomas had seen when he’d come here last with Aris. A quick glance at Ava told Thomas that she wasn’t bothered by them at all, in fact she appeared to ignore them, to pretend they were nothing more than vaguely interesting wallpaper.

Thomas was struck by the desire to string her up and see how much she liked it, but they still needed her.

For now.

Inside the room at the center console were two people: Rianne, who was irreverently sitting on the console itself with a large taser-gun in her arms, set to stun, and a scientist Thomas hadn’t seen before.

Or at least he thought he hadn’t, though there was something vaguely familiar about his dark skin and light hair, the way he sat hunched in upon himself and refused to look at any of the immunes hanging around him, as though he was ashamed.

“Look, Clyde, we’ve got company,” Rianne said. Her eyes were calculating and fixed upon Ava—Thomas didn’t miss the way her hold on the gun shifted the tiniest bit in response to the sudden tension in her shoulders.

She hadn’t been tense around the scientist though. Interesting. He wondered why.

“That’s not my name,” Not-Clyde said with a labored sigh, as though they’d had this discussion before.

“It’s part of your name, and I don’t like your real one, you’re Clyde now,” Rianne stated, though her eyes never backed down from Ava’s. This was definitely someone that Thomas would want riding into battle with him. Or, well, not riding. Running? Flying?

Not important.

“Dr. Paige if you’re hurt to tell me to pull the plug now that the kid is back, I’m going to have to respectfully decline,” Clyde said. When he turned around in his chair, Thomas saw that his face was weathered and heavy but full of resignation. Like he’d already lost hope.

“… and then shoot you.”

Rianne was smiling, and Thomas was uncomfortably reminded of Rachel; the two of them together would be a terrifying force of nature and Thomas was excited to see it.

Assuming Rachel was still alive.

“No one is killing anyone, alright,” Thomas said. Ben snorted, and Thomas stopped what he was about to say to look at him in disbelief, but Ben just held up his hands and gestured for Thomas to continue. “Anyway. No killing, we’re about to strike a new deal.”

“I beg you pardon?” Ava demanded. “We already had a deal, Thomas. One you’ve yet to make good on I might add.”

“Yes well, WCKD is my role model what can I say?” Thomas sneered. “It’s basically the same deal, just postponing your actions longer.”

If Ava didn’t go with this then Thomas wasn’t sure what he would do, how to react. He might actually just kill her and cut that whole plan as a loss entirely—they made it to the Safe Haven without her help the first time, Thomas could find a way to do it again. Flying by the seat of his pants was annoying for his friends but honestly it was the only way Thomas really knew how to operate. Whenever he took the time to actually lay out a plan it never worked out, improvisation was his greatest life skill. Probably his only life skill, if he thought about it.

In his nerves, Thomas reached down into his pouch and pulled out a mint leaf to shove in his cheek. The scent was calming, even though the taste of it gave Thomas… _ideas_ that were not exactly conducive to him doing much other than getting lost in thought. It was a give and take.

“Convince me,” was all Ava said in return.

“Right, so. I’m going to give you what Janson wanted,” Ben’s eyes widened in alarm and confusion, but Thomas kept going. “And you’re going to study it. Learn what you can from it, see why it is exactly that Janson is so focused on this.”

At that point Ben seemed more perplexed than ever, and Thomas couldn’t blame him. He had no idea what words were about to come out of his mouth, either. Every day was a surprise.

“That was already our bargain,” Ava began, but Thomas wasn’t done speaking.

“ _While you do this_ ,” Thomas said, chastising her for her interruption, “I will again be making use of your resources to aide in my search. And you’ll be figuring out a way to bring these kids out of their coma without killing them.”

Ava crossed her arms, “Thomas you know I can’t do that, you know why this research is too important to be stopped!”

“Did I stutter? Do you want answers or not, Ava?”

“Answers weren’t part of the bargain.”

“Yes, well, they’re about to be!” Thomas shouted.

“Uh, excuse me? Can I buy a fucking vowel here?” Rianne interjected, weapon in the air. “What the hell are you people talking about? _No one_ has any answers! To anything! At all!”

“Not now,” Ben whispered. But she wouldn’t be silenced.

“Half of my people are strung up like puppets and you’re telling me you won’t find a way to get them down? That we’re needed for some bangin’ cure for some people? I don’t care that the world is dying! I don’t! I care about _them_ dying!” she yelled.

“Then you’re a selfish brat who can’t see the bigger picture!” Ava snapped back, and Thomas was in shock.

He’d never seen Ava lose her cool like that, not ever. No matter what was said or done, Ava Paige never lost her composure. Who _was_ this girl?

“Selfish? _I’m_ selfish? Tell me, Wrinkles, what the hell are you sacrificing, huh? Where’s your big contribution to the greater good? Or am I wrong in thinking that this is literally all for your benefit?” Rianne said.

Ava turned white with rage, and her voiced lowered to a tone he’d never heard before. He was stuck looking back and forth between the two, gape-mouthed. Ben was no better, nor was Clyde. The guards were backing away, slowly.

“My contribution is my science, it’s the only—”

“So, you’re not immune, then?” Rianne asked.

Ava’s lips pursed before he answered, “No.”

“Right, yeah, now you’ll have to forgive me because my memory is a little fuzzy, but ever heard of evolution?” Rianne’s smiles was sweet, and biting. The way it didn’t meet her eyes when she looked at Ava niggled at the back of Thomas’s brain, but he couldn’t figure out where he’d seen it before.

When he’d seen someone get under Ava’s skin before.

“Evolution.” Ava responded flatly.

“Yep! Adaptation, all that?”

Thomas’s smile was cruel when he joined in. “Those who can adapt, survive. Those who can’t?”

“Die.” Rianne finished, and she accentuated it with a cock of her weapon and a dangerous tilt of her head. “So maybe you should listen to Bambi Eyes over here before we decide to speed it along.”

“And just what is it that _Bambi Eyes_ has to offer?” Ava gritted out.

“Answers.” Thomas said. “And you’re _really_ going to want them. So, my offer is this. We form a temporary alliance, you and me. I get your resources, you try to save the immunes you’ve put in a coma, you harm no one, and when you’ve finished studying what I’m about to give you and want answers, you get them. On the condition that once hearing them you’re willing to negotiate again and _listen_ to our side of things.”

“You truly think your answers will change our stance so profoundly, Thomas?” Ava asked, and Thomas was truly sick of being spoken to like a child.

“Ben? Hand it over.” Thomas said. Ben looked more confused than ever, so Thomas elaborated. “The thing in your sock, genius. Give it over.”

Recognition dawned in Ben’s eyes, and all attention was focused on him as he bent down to retrieve the vial from his mangy sock. The gasp from Ava and Clyde was audible when they realized what it was; Ben handed it to Thomas, who spun it around in his fingers.

He’d given one to Ben to hold onto for a reason, just in case he wasn’t immune, so handing this over was a risk. But a needed one. If nothing else Thomas would make sure Clint had stolen enough supplies to make more if they found themselves in need.

“Serum?” Ava whispered.

“I guess you’ll just have to find out, won’t you? Do we have a deal?” Thomas asked carefully.

There was a moment of tense silence while Ava weighed her decision, but Thomas knew they had her hooked. She was a scientist—leaving questions unanswered wasn’t something she was capable of.

“We have a deal.”

Thomas reached out and gave the vial of serum to Clyde and nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a shock of electricity run through his fingertips when their hands met. He wasn’t sure when he’d had a chance to build up current, but stranger things had happened.

“Oh, and Ava? I want the Berg that runs off solar power this time, no more of this ‘fuel’ nonsense.” Thomas said.

“Then how will I make sure you’ll come back once you’ve found what you’re looking for?” she asked.

Thomas met eyes with Rianne and Ben before glaring up at Ava.

“Because I care more about the lives of these kids than you do.”


	11. Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Familiar Faces, Unfamiliar Places

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the 11!Verse

If Gally had known exactly how much getting nailed in the shuckin’ chest with a goddamn spear would hurt, even through the piece of leather he’d fixed underneath his shirt, he might not have insisted for the plan so strongly.

‘Plan’, right.

He was operating off of descriptions from a guy who couldn’t see what was clearly in front of his face, hoping like hell the Greenie managed to flail his way directly into a unique set of circumstances that would result in them meeting up with Gally again, and he could save their asses.

Then maybe both he and Ben would have a place together in paradise—assuming that Ben forgave him, of course.

Gally would never forget the look on his face, the desperation and hope and apology in his eyes when he lifted the spear and let it fly. He would never forget the taste of their last kiss, with battle raging around them and lines of salt cascading down their cheeks. It was such a contrast to their first kiss, really. They traded rain and wonder for tears and terror. It wasn’t a trade that Gally was fond of.

Wandering around the desert with two random shanks who’d picked him up without any real direction of where he was supposed to be going didn’t exactly help him think happily about his life choices. He wasn’t sure what he expected when he woke up but being tied up in the backseat of a rusty old vehicle wasn’t it.

From what the Greenie had said the two of them weren’t friends where he’d come from. Wasn’t surprising, Gally didn’t keep many friends just on principle—and that would only be worse if Gally had been forced to banish Ben.

He’d had nightmares about having to do it ever since Newt had explained what had happened in the past.

His entire ‘other’ life was shit, according to them. Banishing Ben, being kidnapped (again?) by WCKD, killing Chuck, being stabbed and left to die… But so far none of that had happened again. Ben was safe, Ben was keeping close to the Greenie so that he could be led right back to him. Three months was all he had to wait, right?

He’d lived forever in the Glade before Ben came out of the box.

Three months would be easy.

 

 

Three months was going to be _hell_.

Gally was living actual, physical hell and he was becoming increasingly convinced that either the Greenie had left out several key details or something had gone wrong somewhere because at the rate he was going, he was going to _literally die_ before he reached three weeks, let alone three months.

No one had mentioned that the two shanks who’d picked him up where actually batshit crazy, or that not a day and a half after they’d grabbed him they would be _eaten alive_ by shuckin _Cranks_. They had stopped for a piss in the middle of nowhere, supposedly close to their end destination, and Gally had just _happened_ to finish his business before the other two. Otherwise he’d have been right there with them, whereas instead he was speeding along in the general direction they’d been headed in and freakin’ the shuck out because he barely had any idea how to drive the damn car.

All he knew was that if you moved the stick certain ways, the car would do certain things. He was less worried about knowing how to stop than he was about going as fast as he could go in the opposite direction of the monsters before he klunked his damn pants.

It took him nearly five minutes of driving before he’d finally stopped screaming.

He understood that maybe he and the Green Bean weren’t friendly where he came from, but surely Gally would have _told someone_ about this shit show? Eventually? Maybe? Was he honestly so messed up and alone that he’d hadn’t told anyone about the most horrifying experience of his life?

Then again, if he’d already killed Ben and Chuck… this might not have rated on the scale.

And who would have listened to him anyway? Frypan, possibly, unless he’d hated him too. Except the only person Gally would want to tell would be Ben… who was gone. Gally would have had no one.

Maybe he should start referring to the Greenie by his name, if he managed to keep Gally from living that fate again.

It was hours before the car ran out of gas and Gally slept, if you could even call it sleeping. He didn’t trust the locked doors to hold up against a monster’s strength and every time he closed his eyes he pictured Ben’s face before he threw the spear—Gally imagined the face would have been the same as the one he’d worn when his boyfriend had been the one to push him out into the horrors of the Maze. Gally lost track of how many times he’d woken up screaming, hands still moving in front of his face as he tried to claw the stone walls open.

 

 

The morning dawned hot and windy and life didn’t look like it was going to improve any time soon; there were no spare fuel cans in the car that he could see, and there wasn’t exactly a fueling station nearby for him to get to. All Gally had was a direction to walk in, a gun, and the conviction that all of this couldn’t have been for nothing. Newt said they’d kept as much to the original timeline as possible, with the exception of the early break out and the number of people saved. Neither of those things should have had an effect on how Gally wound up in the Last City, unless it was the knowledge of where he was trying to go that messed him up.

But more likely than not, this was all supposed to happen. He was supposed to be stranded, hot, and miserable while he navigated dunes and tried to keep the sand from caking his throat. His water bottle was almost out, as were the rations that Frypan had packed for every Glader before they made their break.

The only thing Gally had plenty of, now, was the aloe. Several times a day he used it to combat the sting and the itch of his slowly crisping skin—though he knew it wouldn’t be very effective as long as he was still exposed to the glare of the Sun all day every day.

Time passed but he was so delirious that it had begun to lose all meaning. Some part of him recognized that there were vehicles moving around him, that he’d been found by some sort of patrol, but he was too far gone; his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he pretended that the arms wrapping around his midsection belonged to the boy he was doing all of this for.

 

 

Thomas could have warned him that Lawrence was the creepiest lookin’ shank Gally would ever lay eyes on. He could have. It would have only taken an extra sentence, a few words, to prepare him for the fact that the guy was halfway through what these people called the ‘Gone’ and that his face had half rotted off. Gally didn’t know whether it was oversight or payback for something he’d done in another life, but dammit he should have punched the kid harder when he’d had the chance.

He didn’t suppose he’d left the best impression on his new leadership, considering he’d passed out in a shuckin’ desert and woken up to a guy missing half his nose only inches from his face. Honestly at that point, looking back, Gally was proud that he didn’t reacted the way Chuck had when he’d woken up in the box. For whatever reason, though, they’d decided to keep him. Gally of course knew that it was because they’d most likely scanned his neck while he was out and saw where he’d come from—Thomas never said whether or not Gally was used as a blood bag for serum, but he supposed he’d find out soon enough.

Or at least, he thought he would.

 

 

Gally had only been part of the crew for a day, barely enough time to get to know the lay of the land, when something happened that Thomas had never mentioned. He was pretty sure the shank would have noticed that half the damn town had been destroyed by giant shucking guns attached to the walls of the city.

At first, he hadn’t known anything was out of the normal. He was listening to Luca explain how their operation worked when Luca stopped mid-sentence to stare at a giant fucking plane that looked more like a tank, and the three helicopters that followed close behind it.

“That’s not normal then, I take it?” Gally asked.

“No,” Luca murmured, distracted. “There’s never that much traffic to that place, it would defeat the point. One berg, maybe. But one that big? Helicopters following after it? No way. We gotta tell Lawrence, come on.”

“Wait!” Gally called after him as he struggled to keep up. “What the hell is a shuckin’ ‘berg’? Luca!”

He never got his answer because not five minutes later the whole damn world erupted.

Screams. Loud, crashing, booms. Earthquakes. Pandemonium.

Gally ran out into the street, away from Luca, to see what was going on; they were firing on the town. He’d been told before that sometimes they’d fire the guns at the area just in front of the gate if people got too ballsy, but that they never touched the town for whatever reason. What changed?

A sinking pit in his stomach answer the question for him—Newt and Thomas had changed.

Those two lovesick idiots had finally gone too far, whatever they were doing. Thomas had been right; they wouldn’t be able to depend on this timeline being the same. Gally had screwed himself. Big time.

He stood there watching the destruction for a few minutes in a distant state of mind, as though he were watching it happen from outside his body. If he hadn’t been, if he’d been paying more attention, he would have noticed the exact moment that the sound of the screams had changed. That they had stopped being general terror and confusion, and instead became something more specific.

It was the gunshots that snapped him back to reality.

The gunshots, and the guttural snarls that followed.

He’d heard that sound before.

Once.

Once had been enough.

“ _Cranks!”_

“They set Cranks on us!”

“Run, you idiot!”

It was Luca, he’d come back into the street after Gally, grabbed him, shoved him farther up the street and half dragged him out of there—but not before Gally caught a glance of what was chasing after them. There were dozens of them, the Cranks. WCKD had to have kept a stash of them somewhere, for something. Maybe even to be used as a weapon because that was definitely what was happening now. Someone had decided to wipe this little shanty town off of the face of the planet, and they weren’t going to do it kindly.

Gally had never been much of a Runner. He wasn’t made for it, he was large and muscled and clunky. But he saw the Cranks headed for them, he felt Ben’s lips against his own in their goodbye kiss, he heard the whispered words that had been for Gally and Gally alone, ‘ _Come back to me, I love you.’_

And Gally ran.

He ran for every kiss they hadn’t yet shared, for all the moments Ben’s eyes had grown wide with wonder, for the sound of his laugh, for the feeling of him warm and pliant beneath him, for the chance to hold his freckled face between his palms just one more time and show him exactly how much he loved the gentle boy with kind eyes.

Gally ran for his reason to live, and he ran fast enough to catch up to Luca as he unlocked the door to a large van. Fast enough to grab Luca by the shoulder and pull him backwards, to then push Luca behind him and use him as a human shield against the Crank who’d come close to overtaking Gally. That would have, if Gally hadn’t given it Luca to devour instead. He should have felt guilty, and he would later, but at the moment he couldn’t have felt guilty if he’d tried.

“Sorry buddy,” Gally whispered to himself as he closed the door and revved the engine. “I’ve got too shuckin’ much to live for.”

 

 

He still had no real idea how to drive, and no real direction to go in, but he remembered Thomas talking about an army in the mountains and figured that wasn’t a horrible place to start.

The main problem with that theory was that there were a whole lot of mountains and the supplies stockpiled in the van would last him awhile, but they wouldn’t last him forever. He was pleased to see that there were several cans of fuel among water and non-perishables, enough to keep him going for weeks if he had to, but he still needed to narrow it down.

The planes had come from one direction and the largest mountain range was in the other, so Gally decided to split the different and drive between them for the slightly smaller mountain range nearby. Thomas had told him you could see lights at night, so that what he would do. Drive for as far and long as it took for him to see the lights that would lead to Thomas, and Thomas meant Ben.

The lights would lead him home.

 

 

It was nearly dusk by the time the jitters from earlier finally passed and Gally was thinking clearly again. Or at least he thought he was, but if that was the case why was there a broken-down car, a section of ruined buildings and people?

He knew he shouldn’t have stopped, he knew it, but it was like an electric current ran underneath his skin and only stopped when he’d made up his mind to slow down and roll his window just enough to be able to speak to the figure who approached him.

He was dark skinned and full of sorrow, as though he’d lost all hope. The electric pull beneath his skin started up again and Gally found himself stopping the van completely and stepping out to greet him. Behind him stood a dark-skinned woman holding a bundle in her arms, and a memory tugged at his brain, demanding to be heard but not speaking clearly.

“What’s your name, son?” the man asked.

“I’m Gally,” he answered. “What’s yours?”

“Name’s Manny. We seem to find ourselves in a bit of a situation, young man. And wouldn’t mind a bit of help if you’re willing.”

Manny. Two dark-skinned adults and a bundle. Thomas’s story about the Right Arm and their members.

“Depends. Are their names Fran and Ian, and how likely are you to believe a ridiculously impossible story?” Gally asked frankly.

He guessed by the way Manny pulled a gun on him faster than Gally could blink that he was right, and things were about to get seriously interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, you might have noticed I've mentioned some familiar people or familiar names. Or that some scenes sound oddly familiar... the reason for this is that you might be reading the prequel, Talk Me Home by comebacknow.
> 
> Well, the sort of prequel... you see lightning does some crazy things to space and time...
> 
> Prequel: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13874430/chapters/31919943
> 
> You haven't seen the last of the 11!Verse, though. We have companion pieces in Wicked Knight by Tattered_Dreams.... along with others. A master post of the reading order will be added to tumblr. 
> 
> Enjoy :)


	12. Flare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt follows his own plans, until he doesn't.

The truck held out for about a half a day after the episode by Winston’s Rocks, and after that they were forced to carry on by foot. But truthfully it wasn’t that bad, for Newt at least. Yes, his leg ached after fighting through the dunes and the harsh winds but when he compared it with how dreadful things were the first time around… this was a pleasant walk on a spring day. They weren’t even out of water yet, though their bottles started to get low after a few hours walking in the harsh sunlight.

To pass the time, they shared stories. Most wanted to hear tales about how things went in the future, of course, but eventually they stopped asking questions when they realized that the answers weren’t fun. At all. More often than not Newt’s stories about how completely wrong things went in the future only served to dishearten the group and make their walk seem unending.

Minho kept glancing at the sky to watch for a lightning storm, determined not to suffer the same fate as his counterpart—Newt didn’t blame him. Especially when the lightning appeared to have decidedly odd effects on those it touched.

Minho eventually prodded and teased and antagonized Rachel into agreeing to tell stories of their Spring; for the remainder of their journey Newt listened to Rachel, Harriet, and Miyoko weave stories of ice and snow.

And giant flying monster bats, because of course there were.

Bloody Hell.

 

 

They reached Brenda and Jorge’s hideout on the edge of nowhere just as the Sun was beginning to set in the sky and there wasn’t a thundercloud in sight. If they could just agree on a buggin’ course of action, then Newt would be able to dodge through the creepy warehouse full of Crank’s with enough light from outside to see the bloody path. But for _some_ reason _certain_ individuals were against the plan.

“Listen,” Newt explained for what felt like the thousandth time. “The last time we went through those doors we ended up hanging upside down for the greater part of two hours, you understand? I’m not going to be strung up like a bleedin’ rabbit listenin’ to my innards rearrange themselves because my backup decided they wanted to go on a field trip. I’m goin’ in alone and that’s final!”

Minho squinted his eyes at Newt for a split second before there was a rush of movement and a stinging pain upside the back of Newt's head. Newt's mouth fell open and closed several times as he stared at Minho in betrayal.

"No," Minho said. He brought up a finger at pointed it at him for emphasis. "Bad Newt."

"Did he just..." Miyoko whispered to Rachel, but Rachel just smacked Miyoko’s  hand and stared at the scene before her with unrivaled joy.

"What the hell?" Newt finally asked. Minho just shrugged and was suddenly back to normal.

"I dunno man, just seemed like what your boyfriend would say if he was here," Minho said. "That's a stupid plan and you're not going in alone. You're just not."

 

Five minutes and a tied-up Minho later, Newt walked in alone. Alone and deliberately trying to erase the image of Rachel and Harriet smirking at each other while holding the rope used to secure his best mate. It wasn’t relevant, and he had plenty of horrifying images trapped in his skull already, he didn’t need anymore, thanks.

The way the metallic warehouse door slammed shut behind him sent shivers down his spine; Newt had to take a moment to close his eyes and shake the past off of his shoulders.

Minho was fine.

There was no storm.

He would open his eyes and see about twenty Cranks chained to various obstacles, but it was alright. As long as he didn’t stray too far from the path, they couldn’t get him.

He still had two vials of the cure strapped to his leg, just in case.

Newt opened his eyes a second before the Cranks began their wailing, but instead of shrinking back he moved forward with confidence. The monsters could not, _would not_ , scare him. Not anymore. He had gone through hell and come out the other side—he knew how they thought. If Newt showed no fear, he would be fine.

Surely, he would be fine.

He was halfway down the path when she appeared, short black hair and attitude in full swing. Newt stopped walking, just out of arms reach of two Crank’s who were seemed three seconds from chewin’ their buggin’ arms off just so they could claw at him, so the sight of Brenda was entirely welcome. In fact, he had such a mad rush of affection for the girl that he couldn’t help but smile and relax upon seeing her, the story of her mad bus rescue was one he wasn’t likely to forget.

He just wished he’d been able to hear it in person.

“You don’t seem to be too uncomfortable around our guard dogs,” Brenda said cautiously. Of course she was cautious—anyone not afraid of navigating the Crank’s was either a threat or a worthy ally, she’d once said. ‘The only difference between the two was who pulled a blade on whom first’. A lesson Newt remembered well.

“I assumed they were a way to judge the difference between someone who was and wasn’t worth your time,” Newt began with a smirk. “Lovely to see you, Brenda.”

She had the gun pointed at his face faster than he could blink; Newt couldn’t keep a lid on the fond exasperation that ran through him though he knew it wasn’t helping his predicament. He raised his hands into the air half-heartedly and refused to wipe the smirk off of his face.

“Calm down, mate,” Newt said. “And stop reaching for the small dagger you keep in the band of your trousers, you’re not being subtle. And d’ya honestly think it’ll be any more effective than the bloody gun pointed at my face?”

Brenda took an actual, physical step backwards and tilted her head at Newt in a shaken disbelief. He was never going to let her live this down, not ever, because Brenda didn’t back down from shite.

Took her arm away from the dagger though, so that was something.

“Why are you so calm?” She asked.

“That’s not the question you want to ask, though,” Newt taunted.

Brenda narrowed her eyes, “No, it’s not. How do you know who I am?”

“That’s a long story, so I’ll give you the short answer,” Newt said. His voice softened, and he genuinely felt guilty for the words he was about to say, but it had to be done. “I was a friend of George’s.”

The effect was immediate.

She holstered the gun.

Newt dropped his hands.

Brenda darted forward.

She made to grab his shoulders.

Newt grinned.

They’d practiced the move for hours and hours while Thomas had lain unconscious for three days straight, when Newt had needed physical activity to keep himself from going back into that vehicle and strangling the boy in his sleep. He’d worked with Brenda first, then with Harriet, on how to turn someone else’s attack against them—Brenda called it her signature move, and Newt was about to use it against her.

When she darted in between the Cranks to get at him, Newt grabbed her wrists and turned them in against each other and dropped to the ground, spinning, using Brenda’s momentum from her dart forward and fall to force them to change places. In the same move, he removed the gun from her holster and the knife from her back—though he didn’t have time to make a grab for the one in her boot that she kept as a last resort.

She’d drilled him over and over until he could complete the move flawlessly, and there was finally a payoff for it.

He knew she would have been proud of him, though the Brenda in front of him was shell shocked.

“You—”

“Yep. I did.”

Brenda didn’t move, she just sat there between the arms of their pet Cranks and _stared_. “Who _are_ you?” she asked.

“Names Newt,” he said. “And I’ve got a meeting with you and Jorge, _only_ you and Jorge, starting just as soon as you get me up those rusty stairs. Good that?”

Brenda said nothing, so Newt gave her back her weapons and pulled her to her feet. She still didn’t trust him, but she would. He had one more card up his sleeve that he was waiting to play until he had the two of them alone, a card that would buy him enough time to convince them of the reality of the situation.

Newt twitched his eyebrows up at her in his universal gesture of… well, he wasn’t sure what it meant, exactly, but somehow it always seemed to get the point across and this time was no different.

“After you,” Brenda threw down like a challenge, but it was no matter. Newt remembered the way. He gave her a half-smile and winked before he sauntered off on the most direct path to Jorge’s office, leaving her cursing and the harsh gurgling of the Cranks behind him.  
  
He was just glad that with his hands in his pockets, Brenda wouldn’t be able to tell they were flinching in time with every growl.

 

 

“Speak,” Jorge demanded.

They were up in his loft, just the three of them, and Jorge was playing a little too pointedly with his shotgun. Brenda had shaken the thugs off easily since there was only Newt and not a large crowd, the fact that he looked less worn from driving the Scorch instead of walking it probably did nothing but help the cause as well.

Nothing like not looking inches from death to inspire confidence in a person.

“’If wishes were fishes, they’d sing my favorite song’,” Newt recited. It was their code phrase, Jorge and Brenda’s. It was what they gave their trusted allies whenever they were forced to separate, along with a location of safe houses that would recognize the phrase and give a bloke safe harbor.

Both of them looked at Newt with new interest and concern, so he supposed that it had the desired effect.

“Are you alright, _hermano_?” Jorge asked. “You in some kind of trouble?”

“Here to get you out of it, actually,” Newt answered. “May I sit?”

He gestured to the sofa Brenda glared at him from and took a seat before they responded.

“Sure, go ahead, make yourself at home,” Brenda snarked. Newt caught the tail end of the glance she sent Jorge behind his back, he needed to tread carefully going forward.

“Honestly? You’re going to want to take a seat for this as well. My story is long, brutal, and completely unbelievable. But I need you to believe me anyway, or at least listen,” Newt explained. “If at the end of it you don’t believe me, all I ask is that you accept a gift and allow me to leave. I’ve no intention of hanging upside down from your chains again.”

“…again?” Brenda asked.

“Right, yeah, about that. See, the first time we met…”

Newt told his story yet another time, though this was his first telling without Thomas and it showed. It felt more stilted, unsure, ridiculous, without Tommy sitting there next to him to aide in the telling.

To their credit, Jorge and Brenda’s faces did not react to his words even the slightest. Not even as the hours grew long, and the sky darkened outside the large windows did they break their poker faces, which he’d known already were eerily good, or interrupt him. And when he finished the telling they each did him the honor of not immediately deciding he was either mad or should be killed.

He’d very much like not to be killed.

Or chained.

Again.

“And what is it you want from us?” Jorge asked, the first to break the silence, though somehow that wasn’t the question Newt expected first.

“Sorry?”

“You say you’re this future man with all the answers; you know things about us without us telling you, you have explanations for why certain things are the way they are, and you offer us a way to get everything it is you know we want. Why?” Jorge explained.

“Were you not listening? I’m not sure if we’ll be able to get a Berg again, mate. That bloody ship is our only way there so once we go it’s not like I’ll be able to come back an’ grab ya!”

“No,” Brenda said, frustrated. “We got that part. But why did you come for us? What do you need us for?”

“I… don’t understand the question,” Newt admitted.

How could they not understand? He’d described all they’d been through, all they’d worked for. He’d honestly only expected two reactions: either they’d believe him and get a move on, or they’d think he was barmy and lock him up somewhere. He didn’t have a plan for an in-between. Maybe he hadn’t known them as well as he’d thought he did.

“What. Do. You. Want?” Jorge demanded.

“For you to pack your bloody bags and get a move on! Why is this such a foreign concept to you?” Newt begged the question as he looked back and forth between the pair. They stared at him oddly, like they were discovering something, and Newt would never not be slightly creeped out by the way they seemed to read each other’s minds.

“Who are we to you?” Brenda asked softly.

“You’re family,” Newt answered, without thinking. Which was unfortunate because thinking was _supposed_ to be the thing he was good at, though he was starting to believe that he wasn’t very good at it at all—it was just being compared to Thomas that made Newt seem spectacular at it. “Jorge taught me how to fly, although very poorly actually, thanks for that. Brenda you’re the biggest cheat at cards I’ve ever met, though I can’t for the life of me figure out how you manage to do it without anyone catching you. You both try to pretend that you’re heartless, but you pick up a cause faster than anyone I’ve ever known. We’ve fought together, bled together, cried together, and passed the time together. I know all of your stories and all of your dreams. If you think I wouldn’t try to get you to come with me then you’re not nearly as intelligent as we’ve always given you credit for.”

They looked at each other before they nodded and stood; Newt braced for an impact that never came, though he did get a pat on the back from a small hand that caused him to meet their eyes.

They were smiling.

“I don’t cheat at cards, I’m just the best. Now help me pack—anything in particular we’ll need?” she asked.

Seriously?

All he’d needed to do was get emotional?

No wonder Thomas got everyone to do what he needed them to do if all that needed to be done was spill emotions all over the place—it was the one thing the bloke was good at. Except for when it came to Newt, but that was a thought for another day.

“Well, how would you feel about playing a song? I’m trying to leave a trail, you see. Tommy’s got to find me somehow,” Newt said.

 

 

“You blew up a building,” Minho deadpanned.

Newt glanced back in the rearview at the destruction still evident after nearly a day of driving to a different spot in the mountains than Newt had ever visited before. After they’d packed and cleared the building, Jorge and Brenda gathered the Gladers into two large vehicles and started off for the mountain safe house they’d kept secret. The only reason it hadn’t been used to last time ‘round was because it appeared to be in the opposite direction of Marcus, though it was still on the way to the Last City.

Sort of.

More like ‘on the way _adjacent_ ’, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that after a minute or two on the road their old building blew up and nearly made Minho klunk his pants, which he was never living down. Especially because he couldn’t appear to get over it.

“It was _necessary_ ,” Newt muttered for what felt like the thousandth time. He looked over at where Minho sat by the window, with Rachel curled up on his shoulder and Harriet scouring the sand for any sign of Sonya.

He knew how she felt, but it wouldn’t do to have her focus on it like this. Newt had a plan, or at least the small workings of one. Most of it depended on when Thomas found them—hence the explosion.

“But how will it help? We aren’t there anymore, so all you did was destroy a building someone else could have used,” Miyoko argued. She was sat in the back with Dominic though Newt felt her glare from the driver’s seat and pointedly ignored it.

“Staying there wasn’t safe,” Newt said. “Not when Janson tracked us there last time. If he thinks for even one second we survived the helicopter landings that’ll be the very first place he goes, so we couldn’t stay.”

“And if Newt left any clues there like he did in our plane, it could be Janson that finds them. Not Thomas,” Minho said, though he said it more like a question than a statement, so Newt nodded for him to keep going. “So instead you blew it up as… a marker?”

“I’m leaving a trail of destruction that Tommy’ll follow straight to us, eventually,” Newt explained. “I’ve just got to find a way to merge where we are going now with where he thinks we will go, and we can meet.”

“What if he thinks that Janson found you again there and that’s why you had to blow it up?” Dominic asked.

The answer came from a place that Newt wasn’t expecting, though it was just as welcome.

“Then I wouldn’t want to be Janson when Thomas finds him,” Harriet whispered. For the first time in hours she pulled her gaze from the scenery and fixed her clear eyes on Newt’s face. “You said I taught you how to fight? Before?”

Newt nodded.

“Now you get to teach me.”

 

 

They’d reached the safe point and slept for what had felt like an eternity before waking, and planning. Newt poured over map after map trying to match the geography from his memory with what he found on paper with only half the results he’d hoped for; when he needed a break, he opened his classes on hand to hand combat.

They were dreadful, and he thanked his lucky stars that Brenda was there to offer guidance in the form of threats, insults, and eventually useful tips, as was her style. When the others weren’t learning hand to hand, Jorge taught them how to handle weapons—Harriet took to them like a bird took to the skies, though Newt expected nothing less.

It was while Newt watched her learn how to reload a pistol without stopping fire that he was corned by Minho.

“I want in,” Minho said. He wore his serious face, the one normally reserved for Gathering’s and Banishment’s, so Newt knew that he wasn’t being vague on purpose.

“In on what, exactly?” Newt asked.

“The insanity,” Minho answered. He kept his gaze firmly on the skyline and the faint plumes of smoke that rose from the destroyed warehouse. For all the driving they’d done they didn’t appear to be far away—though that was driving in the mountains. Lots of travel for small rewards. “You and Thomas have this thing you do, y’know? Crazy shanks pulling all these stunts on your own, trying to protect the rest of us from it. But I don’t want to be protected. I want in.”

Newt didn’t know what to say, truly. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been doing it, not really.

“Minho—”

“No, just. Lemme get this out, okay?” Minho asked. He waited for Newt’s nod before he continued. “I know I’m not him, the other Minho, and that’s okay. I don’t wanna be, and part of me is glad that you haven’t like, merged us into one person or whatever. And I know that this was all stuff you’d do with him or he would pull too, or you just pulled in order to save him. I don’t want to be him, but I think a certain measure of crazy is just a Minho trait no matter what timeline you’re in. I want to help, I want to bear the burden, I want to pull the crazy stunts so that they don’t have to. But I can’t do that if you don’t let me.”

Newt was about to respond when he noticed search lights in the distance, coming from a Berg near the warehouse, and his heart stopped beating in his chest.

 _Thomas_.

“You mean that?” Newt clarified, though his eyes remained fixed on the Berg.

“Yes, why?”

“Good that, because you’re about to get your chance.”

 

 

“No,” Jorge stated.

“Newt, that can’t be Thomas. You can’t be sure!”

“I’m not sure about this…”

“Absolutely not.”

“Where would he even get a Berg?” Rachel asked, voice loud above the din of protests that came from Newt stating he wanted to get the Berg’s attention somehow.

“It’s Thomas, alright? Last time we stole one while robbin’ a bloody train, if he want’s a buggin’ Berg he’ll find a way to get his hands on one,” Newt snorted.

“I don’t care,” Brenda argued. “This is our safe house and _you_ brought us on. You have no proof that it’s your boyfriend—”

“He’s not—”

“You keep telling yourself that buddy,” Minho muttered under his breath, though everyone but Newt ignored him, and Brenda continued to speak over them.

“—All this means is that your plan is working, either way. If it’s Janson, he think’s you’ve moved on. If it’s Thomas, his next stop will be Marcus. How does this change anything?” she demanded.

Newt hated that it was a reasonable question.

“They landed,” Newt said. “Janson doesn’t land, ever. It puts him too close to the Cranks, to the virus, which he would never risk.”

As an argument it was a weak one, and he knew it.

“Newt,” Arthur started. “She’s got a point. We have a plan, why would we break it?”

“Because…!” Newt exclaimed, but he didn’t have anything concrete to follow up on it. He just _knew_ and none of them would listen.

But why would they?

“He will find you,” Rachel said softly. “You’ve said so yourself. Waiting a little longer just to be on the safe side will harm no one, and he’d want you to play it safe.”

Newt snorted again but said nothing. Instead he stormed from the room and marched his way outside to face the night sky and look off into the distance through Jorge’s binoculars.

They were old, not very effective, all they could tell him was that the Berg was loading up. He saw figures wearing black, but not faces. The loading door on the back of it was sealing up. Whatever they’d gone to search for they’d either found it or decided that it was no longer there—and if Newt was right, they were about to fly off the wrong damn direction.

There were more voices coming from inside, but Newt ignored them all in favor of trying for a glimpse of something that would prove he was right.

“I’ll go talk to him,” Newt heard Minho say.

Even if Newt could find something it would soon be too late, if he didn’t come up with _some_ way to get a signal out there then Thomas would be gone… and Newt was positive it was him. It had to be. No one else made his nerves go haywire like this, as though he was directly tapped into an electric current.

Minho appeared beside him and shoved something cool and hard into his hands—a flare gun. Newt stared at it a moment in shock before he glanced up into Minho’s smug face. “I said I wanted in, didn’t I? Go, before they notice its gone!”

Newt went.

He climbed higher on the mountain as fast as he could go and ignored the way he didn’t seem to be breathing. In the distance Newt could see the lights of the Berg begin to take off from the ground, he wasn’t moving fast enough. He was only a minute from the clearing when the Berg took flight completely—pointed the opposite way, like he knew it would be.

But he had no choice.

Just as soon as he was close enough Newt aimed his arm straight up in the air and pulled the trigger; the Flare shot up in the sky and the flash of light was so bright it nearly blinded him before it travelled miles and miles into the air. It was a beacon of hope, of discovery, of insanity in case he was wrong.

But he knew he wasn’t, he couldn’t be. It had to be Thomas, it had to be. Newt’s gut screamed that it was him despite all logic, and also ignored that even if it was actually Thomas he’d still given away their position to anyone who might be out looking, for miles around. But it didn’t matter, not as his Flare marked the sky and sent the spark as far as it could go. It had to be Thomas, he had to see it. It had to be Thomas.

_It had to be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that the George newt knew in the Maze was not Brenda's brother, that gets addressed later. Don't worry!


	13. Smoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas learns to use his head, not only his heart.

Nothing.

They’d gone back to the place they’d found the other crashed helicopters in the hopes of digging up more clues or some sort of trail but the only thing they’d found was sand. Sand, and disappointment, and fear.

If only three planes had crashed, where were the other three? Did they get caught in the storm, or had they reached their destination?

Which fate was worse?

“Dan, are we still in contact with Rianne and Aris?” Thomas asked the Glader turned Pilot. Their numbers had shifted slightly since their last expedition—Clint opted to join Thomas while Aris and Justin stayed behind to work with Rianne at organizing the kids who’d been left behind. Not that Aris had many skills to offer; but he was enthusiastic, and he was right when he’d suggested that the telepaths should be separated to have the maximum area of search. If Rachel managed to get back towards the Facility somehow then she’d get back into Aris’ range, hopefully with more information—or vice versa.

Neither of them had wanted to think about the other possibility.

“Yeah boss,” Dan said, eyes fixed on the myriad of screens in front of him. He’d been nervous at Thomas’s decision to leave Eva behind with him as the sole pilot, but Thomas just wasn’t comfortable with having someone on board he didn’t know he could trust. He’d learned that the hard way the first time. “Last ping we got from them was five minutes ago, Aris says Rianne is tearing the place apart.”

“I don’t suppose he gave any details?” Clint asked him.

“Nope, and I value my life too much to ask,” Dan snorted.

Dan had a decent laugh, if you were into that kind of thing. Whenever he was around the other boy Thomas couldn’t help but think back to Frypan’s story about a drunken Newt and his one-time crush on Dan. At least, Thomas had thought the crush was over with. Wasn’t it? Newt had said it was, after the story had been told around a card game and in good company, when he and Thomas had pulled each other aside. So, it wasn’t anything to worry about, right? Besides, Dan wasn’t anything super special to look at anyway, he was nothing but muscle and strong arms and blue eyes and—

“You good, Thomas?” Dan asked.

Shuck, his voice was nice too.

“Yep,” Thomas said. He needed to get out of there before he started thinking irrationally or point blank asked Dan what exactly his intentions were towards Newt—or before he overanalyzed how well Dan’s hands deftly worked the giant machine they flew on with little to no training.

Maybe Thomas should’ve learned how to fly.

“Just, uh keep searching,” Thomas said eloquently before he fled the cockpit to a nearby hallway and collapsed against a wall to catch his breath.

He was being ridiculous, and he knew it.

Thomas stood there on his own for a moment before his brain calmed down enough for him to be able to latch onto other sounds filtering in from the metallic humming of the aircraft. The Berg was larger than the ones he’d stolen previously which meant it came equipped with a small medical room and several small chambers in addition to the main cargo bay and the cockpit area. Not much room, not when you’re in a group that size and miles above the world, but large enough for Thomas to think of it as a flying hotel.

What it all boiled down to was that there weren’t many places to go if you wanted to have a private conversation; Thomas was able to clearly hear the hushed voices of Frypan and Zart from where they spoke in a room down the short hallway—and so could someone else.

“Has anyone even brought it up yet? Or are we just pretending it’s not a problem?” Zart asked. “He made that choice under the assumption that Thomas and Newt knew what they were doing—”

“They _do_ know what they’re doin’, man,” Frypan said. “Ain’t their fault the Rat Man mucked it all up.”

“No, I _know_ that, but Gally is out there on his own with no idea of what’s going on and—”

“And that was his choice to make,” Frypan argued. His voice was hard, no nonsense, the way in got in the Scorch whenever he was serving as the voice of reason. When Newt wasn’t up to the task. “You don’t get a say in that, ya hear me?”

“But how do we know he’s even still alive?!” Zart demanded.

The figure looming in the hallway in front of Thomas, half hidden by shadow, flinched. So did Thomas’s conscience.

“Because he’s gotta be ya dumb shank! He’s gotta be!” Fry yelled. Thomas squeezed his eyes shut. “And we’re gonna find him.”

“Yeah, right,” Zart scoffed. “Just another person to find in this great big nothing of sun and sand and wasteland. Thomas can’t even find Newt and he left clues you think he can find Gally?”

The figure that hid in shadow wiped at his eyes and had evidently heard enough, though his retreat was blocked by Thomas who couldn’t decide if he was in the wrong place or exactly the right one.

One glance up and Ben’s red eyes and resolute stare told Thomas he’d, for once, managed to be in the right place at the right time, and that maybe it was time to stop waiting around for Newt to listen to people’s stories for him. He motioned with his head for Ben to follow him down to the cargo hold for some conversation to pass the hours.

 

 

For the longest time neither of them spoke nor made a sound other than their breathing in the large, echoing chamber. It was cold from the wind that blew through the vents and the harsh steel behind their backs, and the sound of the atmosphere their aircraft cut a path through roared in their ears, but Thomas didn’t mind.

Having noise to drown out the deafening silence that had started the moment he’d seen that Newt and Minho were gone was actually the closest thing he’d found to peace. He’d hoped it would have the same effect on Ben—judging from the way his shoulders slumped and the tension left his neck, Thomas had been right.

“Is he right?” Ben finally asked.

“No,” Thomas replied, voice loud over the rush of air from outside.

“How can you know that?”

“’Cause it’s Gally,” Thomas shrugged. “If nothing else he’ll make sure that he survives just so he can rub my nose in it that he was right.”

He’d hoped that his response would pull a laugh from the Runner but the most it got was a weak smile, and even that was being generous.

“He doesn’t hate you, y’know that right? The other Gally you knew, he…” Ben trailed off, but Thomas knew where that statement had been headed.

“He’d lost you,” Thomas finished. “So, he wasn’t really Gally at all. Not anymore.”

The expression on Ben’s face showed a depth of love and understanding and desolation that Thomas couldn’t even begin to fathom, for all that is was a soul-wrenching sight it was also something to hope for. To strive for. To demand from the world around him the time to achieve it with Newt.

“Listen, I may not know much about the real Gally, but I know there has to be a few traits that carried over,” Thomas said. “And there’s no way that the crazy shank who literally leapt in front of a train to save Newt, and myself, isn’t still alive.”

“ _He did what?!_ ”

Finally, a story that Thomas was excited to share. He detailed the way the city was lain out, the desperation of their situation, how Thomas hadn’t even known if Gally could be trusted let alone followed through a dark and endless tunnel.

But he’d come through. Despite impossible odds, Gally’d come through.

Thomas told Ben about the tunnel, about the trains, and about the poor choice he’d made when he’d thought he was going to be able to help.

“I didn’t know how much time we had, just that we were running out of it. Newt was starting to slow down so I thought that if I sped up then I could help Gally drag him into the other hole when he got there,” Thomas explained. He could still feel the fear that had choked him when he heard the crumble of Newt’s body against the train tracks. Could still taste that bitter, acrid, dust that covered his tongue at the sight. “But I was wrong. Newt fell, his leg gave out. And if I’d just stayed behind with him and helped from the beginning he might have made it. I almost lost him right then and there.”

Thomas was quiet for a moment, lost in his own memories of an all-consuming sound and the vibrations that shook him to his bones.

“What happened?” Ben asked.

“I tried to run after him, to drag him back, but Gally pushed himself past me.”

Anger.

Fear.

Terror.

 _Loss_.

“He tackled Newt to the ground just as the train hit—I thought they’d both been crushed,” Thomas’s voice still trembled to describe it. It had been one of the worst things he’d ever felt in his life, thinking he’d lost Newt. It came in second only to actually holding Newt’s broken body just a few days later. “So, I was pressed to the wall thinking that was it, it was over, and when the train passed… I just stood there with my eyes squeezed shut. Frozen; until I heard them groan, and I swear I’ve never felt a relief like that in my life.”

Thomas ran his hand through his hair and over his face to wipe away the sensation of a wind-swept tunnel and turned to look at Ben. His mouth was agape and crumpled in both sympathy and awe, clearly unsure of what to say. Thomas offered him a smirk and kept going.

“Listen, a shank like Gally? He doesn’t go down easily. He’s too stubborn and too damn loyal to bow out when he thinks he’s needed—and considering he managed to convince _you_ of all people that he needed to be left behind? I think it’s safe to say that he feels he’s pretty shuckin’ needed.”

“But what about Janson? He’s messed everything up, Zart was right about that. How the hell are we gonna find him?” Ben asked.

“I once tracked Minho halfway across this desert with nothing but a few trucks, a busted radio, and a group of people who decided to follow me,” Thomas assured him. “Finding Gally should be a whole helluva lot simpler considering I at least know exactly where he was going. I’ll find him, Ben. I promise.”

Ben never got the chance to respond because right as he opened his mouth a loud shout came from the hallway,

“THOMAS! GET YOUR ASS IN HERE!”

 

 

“I don’t suppose you and your boyfriend have some sort of super-secret smoke signal language, do you?” asked Tim, a Slopper that Thomas had never really interacted with much. He was pressed up against the window next to Frankie, a Slicer, where they stood staring at a massive column of thick, dark, smoke that was clear even against the darkening of the sky.

It was near the mountains.

Thomas knew those mountains.

How the hell had Newt gotten there that fast?

“You’ve gotta be shuckin’ kiddin’ me,” Dmitri said.

All of the Gladers were packed in the cockpit where they stared incredulously at the look of bemused understanding on Thomas’s face.

“Seriously, Thomas?” Clint asked “What the hell does _making a giant explosion_ mean in your language? How the shuck?”

Frypan was doubled over laughing in the corner and Thomas didn’t really understand what was so funny.

“It means that Jorge played his favorite song,” Thomas explained, though he knew the explanation wouldn’t really mean anything for any of them. “And it’s not a smoke signal, alright? We blew up the same building last time, Newt’s apparently getting impatient.”

“Impatient,” Zart deadpanned.

“Yep,” Thomas said.

“Impatient means he blows klunk up,” Zart clarified.

“Yep.”

“I give up. You’re both ridiculous and deserve each other,” Zart threw his hands up in the air and left the room, which only caused Frypan to laugh harder against the console.

“So, I take it I’m flying _towards_ the dark plume of smoke, not away?” Dan asked.

Initially, Thomas wanted to say yes, but he stopped himself. He had to think about this logically. There was always the possibility that this wasn’t Newt, it was Janson. He might fly them straight into a trap if they weren’t careful. Besides, how would newt have gotten there that quickly? They’d walked for what had seemed like weeks before they reached the mountains, though Thomas would be the first to admit that after the loss of Winston the days had blended together in a dusty haze.

So, Newt had either found a way to get there faster, which was possible although not likely, or this was Janson.

He had to be sure.

No more mistakes.

“Not yet,” Thomas instructed Dan, to everyone’s surprise. “The timing doesn’t add up right and Janson knew about this place, it could be a trap. Find somewhere we can land and watch for a few days, try and get some sort of idea of what we’re dealing with here.”

Silence.

“We’re not running in headfirst?” Tim asked. “We’re waiting?”

“Yeah,” Thomas sighed. He leaned his arms against the console and fought to keep his sense of urgency at bay in favor of safety and practicality. It just didn’t make sense that Newt had gotten there that quickly, no matter how Thomas tried to shift time around to account for not dragging Winston and having enough water to go around. “We’re waiting. Ping Aris, Rianne and Justin—fill them in on what’s happening.”

Thomas made to leave the cockpit and collapse somewhere in frustration, but Dmitri held him up with another question.

“Wait, Thomas? If that big of an explosion was Newt being impatient… what’s he gonna do if you keep him waiting?” he asked.

Thomas just smirked and kept walking, because even he couldn’t predict what Newt would think up next. The waiting would kill him, but he had to be safe. There were no more second chances.

Three days, he would wait three days before they flew in to see what happened.

 

 

He lasted two before his self-control broke and he ordered Dan to fly in; Thomas didn’t bother to ask who’d won the betting pool, though judging by the string of cursing from Zart it was Frypan.

 

 

Nothing.

They’d searched the area from top to bottom, but Thomas didn’t even see tracks of the gang Jorge had been the King of.

No sign of WCKD, no sign of distress, just a seemingly random bit of smoke and wreckage at the edge of nowhere. No one had even been by to check it or to scavenge for supplies from the ruins—nothing.

It clearly wasn’t a trap, not with how long they’d been on the ground wandering, and the night was already dark enough for Thomas to have seen if there was an obvious fire in the distance for him to spot, so what was the point? What was this?

“What if it’s breadcrumbs?” Frypan asked. “Like with the sleeve.”

Thomas looked at him in question, but it was Frankie who continued the explanation. “Yeah, like, he doesn’t want to stop moving so he’s leaving you markers to say where he’s been, so that you can catch up to him eventually or something.”

“It makes sense, especially since you said the Rat Man knows about this place,” Clint added. “Why would he want to linger?”

Thomas nodded at them all while he put the pieces together in his head. He still had no idea how Newt could have gotten this far this quickly, but other than that it all made sense. He wasn’t lighting a signal fire, he was leaving a trail.

“So where would he go next?” Ben asked Thomas with a nudge of his shoulder.

“Marcus. Next we went after Marcus. That’s where he’ll go.”

“Then so will we.”

 

They were in flight and pointed in the vague, general direction that Thomas assumed the ramshackle city to be in relation to Jorge’s warehouse arguing about the fact that Thomas had been underground the first time, Dan, he couldn’t give a better sense of direction when Ben grabbed Thomas’s arm and nearly ripped it out of the socket.

“I don’t suppose that means something to you, does it?” Ben asked in fevered tones. He pointed at the monitor that showed the sky to the rear of the Berg where a single, solitary flare of light shone brightly against the darkness.

A spark of light in the dark, and Thomas couldn’t breathe.

“Dan, turn us around,” Thomas forced out.

“Wait, are you sure it’s not a tr—”

“I said turn around!”

Silence rang in the cockpit while the aircraft shifted until the flare was directly in front of them, it’s path a direct line to a spot on a nearby mountain where Thomas could make out lights the closer they flew.

 He gripped Ben’s shoulder so tightly that he knew it would bruise, but every nerve in his body screamed with electricity that only got harsher the closer they flew.

Seconds and minutes blended together but the only thing Thomas could focus on was that it had to be Newt. It had to be him. A flare in the sky? That wasn’t Janson’s style, it wasn’t anyone’s.

No one but Newt.

No one else would be that desperate to alert the entire world to their location, to light a path straight to him.

It had to be Newt.

It had to be.

It was when Dan began his descent that Thomas could make out the figure standing at the edge of a field that held a gun loosely at their side.

A figure soon overwhelmed by others who were frantic, angry, but the figure ignored them all.

Newt.

Alive.

Newt was alive, he was okay, he was standing right in front of him staring at the Berg with the same unfiltered hope on his face that Thomas could feel boiling within. Thomas didn’t register the whoops and hollers of the Gladers or Ben’s pats against his back, his entire world was narrowed down to a pin-point.

Dan had barely been on the ground for a few seconds before Thomas was slamming the button for the cargo bay to open, but even that wasn’t faster enough. The ramp had barely lowered halfway before Thomas scrambled over it and leapt to the ground below, leapt and ran forward through the crowd of people he forced to part before him and directly into the arms of Newt.

His Newt.

Thomas heard laughter, even felt it, but it was nothing to feeling the heartbeat that matched his own or the strong arms wrapped tightly against his torso.

This was real, he’d found him.

He’d found him, and he was never letting him go.

Thomas felt the wave build inside him, high on victory and fueled by days and days of envisioning this exact moment. Promises he’d made to the universe and himself of what he’d do with this chance if he could only be reunited with Newt again—promises to not let anything else go unsaid, unfelt, unverified.

Unknown.

Thomas had to fight to pull back from Newt’s tight embrace far enough to hold Newt’s face firmly between his palms.

Newt’s cheeks were flushed, and his eyes were bright, his grin started out wide but eventually sobered at the intensity in Thomas’s gaze. His eyes held a question, and Thomas had to swallow air before he tripped over the answer. He had to do this right, Newt deserved that much at least.

“Newt, I—”

A force tackled Thomas out of Newt’s grasp, and the moment was lost.

“Thomas!” Minho yelled. “What the hell took you so long shuckface? And where’d you get a Berg?”

Thomas whipped his head around from where Minho held it trapped in his arms and ignored the fist that mussed his hair to try and lock eyes with Newt again, but he was hugging Frypan and Clint. He would have to find another time to try and catch Newt alone or risk being interrupted _yet again_.

“Sorry I’m late,” Thomas said. “Someone didn’t leave me very clear directions.”

 _You should maybe stop trying to kill Minho with your brain, you’ll hurt his feelings_ Rachel said. Her voice was warm and amused, part of Thomas relaxed at the fact that he could tell Aris his best friend was alright.

 _What, you’re his protector now?_ Thomas asked.

_Someone had to shelter him from Harriet. I was best suited. Good to see you, stick._

Thomas snorted.

“Stop with the mind talk, it’s creepy,” Minho said as he dragged Thomas back to a standing position.

It took him a moment to get his bearings but when he did he was delighted to see Brenda near the edge of the insanity, looking out of place but confident. A band of pressure around his heart that Thomas hadn’t even known was there loosened and he attempted to hug her before he remembered that she hadn’t met him yet, technically.

He deserved the punch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again i bend time and geography to my will, and shoot canon in the foot with a BB gun.
> 
> Your comments and enthusiasm are what drive me and I appreciate every one of them so much. I don't respond individually as much as a should but I'm working to get better at that.
> 
> I'm still working 12's which is why chapters are coming so slowly, super brain dead.
> 
> Love you all! Newt and Thomas together again!
> 
> (and you all thought I'd have it be Janson on the Berg, no faith, none of you.)


	14. Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Actions and Consequences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MY 12 HOUR SHIFTS ARE OVER THANK GOODNESS! This means that after I post tonight I'll have time to go back through and correct typos I've missed AND that I should be updating more quickly than once a week. Yay! As always, thank you for reading and your comments are my lifeblood. Enjoy!

He woke up to the sound of sunshine and joy. It filled the empty caverns inside him that once echoed with hollow loneliness that cracked and ached, filled them and healed as it went. It was peace and light and sound and—

Pain?

Thomas opened his eyes at the pain and saw Newt standing above the bed where Thomas lay and laughing so hard that tears slowly leaked from the creases of his eyes. From the sound of the coughing and wheezing it was clear that Newt had been laughing for quite awhile and most likely at Thomas’s expense.

Brenda.

Right hook.

Ah.

Thomas sighed and felt the tender bruise that formed along his jaw and tried to ignore the snickers that fell from the man looming over him, but it was impossible. It was Newt, and he would not be ignored.

“My bloody hero, you are,” Newt said softly. Amusement shone in his eyes while he shook his head down at Thomas, but Thomas couldn’t find it in him to mind. “Not off the buggin’ Berg for five minutes before ya got yourself lain out by our sister. Poor planning, that.”

“Well you know I like to make an entrance,” Thomas said. He didn’t bother fighting the grin or halting his hand as it reached out for Newt’s. “I had to make up for being late somehow, right?”

Newt shrugged but allowed Thomas to pull his callused palm into his own. Thomas tugged Newt down, so he was sitting on the bed next to him and soaked up the words Newt said.

“I knew you’d find me eventually, though I thought the giant bloody explosion might clue you in a bit faster than that.”

“I, uh,” Thomas stammered. “I thought it might be a trap?”

Newt blinked at him.

“You shouldn’t have been able to so fast! I was still searching the ruins!”

Newt blinked again.

“It didn’t make sense, alright? It made more sense that Janson had somehow rigged it as a trap!”

Another blink, but that one came with words attached.

“How is it that the only bleedin’ time ya’ve ever decided to be cautious is the only time ya didn’ need to be?” Newt asked, bewildered, but he held Thomas’s hand with both of his own, now, so he didn’t mean the sting in his words.

“Well how _did_ you get here so fast then, huh? None of that math makes sense,” Thomas argued.

“Right, about that, so I’ll tell you my bit, but you’ve been down so long Ben’s already filled me in about how the shuck you landed in Ava Paige’s bloody Berg and we are going to have _words_ , mate.”

Thomas winced. He hadn’t known exactly how long he was knocked out for, though if you asked him about it later he would try to spin it that he only stayed down for so long because of how badly he’d needed the sleep, but evidently it had been long enough for Newt to get Thomas’s crew to tell him everything.

He should have come up with an agreed-upon story before they landed, but he hadn’t really been focused on anything other than, well, _Newt_.

Thomas raised his eyebrows by way of response and beckoned for Newt to start talking.

“I s’pose I should start out with sayin’ that your body count isn’t the only one that got slightly larger…” Newt began, and Thomas found that for the entirety of the story his eyebrows only climbed higher and higher.

Newt spared no gory details and even included the panic attack at Winston’s Rocks and his fear of dealing with the Cranks but having to put up a good front with Brenda.

“She’s sorry, by the way,” Newt added near the end. “Brenda. She knew who you were about a half-second after you lunged at her, but, you know her reflexes. There was only one way that was gonna end, mate. The hell we’re you thinking?”

“I wasn’t,” Thomas said. “I just saw her there and acted on instinct. It’s been a long few days, alright?”

“So I’ve heard. You bargained the bloody vial, you absolute shank!” Newt dropped his hand and then smacked him lightly on the stomach.

“I didn’t tell her what it was or where I got it!”

“Which is the _only_ reason why I’m not flayin’ you alive, ya idjit,” Newt informed him. “But what exactly do you plan on doin’ when ya go back there for the rest of the immunes, hmm?”

“Well,” Thomas said slowly. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and glanced first out the door to be sure no one was about to walk in before he continued. “I suppose that depends on what she finds.”

Newt squinted for a moment before his face cleared in understanding, “You’re not sure it’s a viable cure, are you?”

Thomas lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug before he wiped his face with his hands and groaned. “I don’t know, alright? I copied Mary _exactly_ but honestly man the science behind all of this is so insane that I swear someone made it all up one night over a bottle of something and suddenly it was fact.”

“Which would be why you just about bled yourself dry back in the Glade; to make sure we had extras, just in case,” Newt added.

Thomas nodded.

They sat there in silence for a moment with Newt lost in thought and Thomas all too aware of their proximity and the building wave within him that hadn’t died out when Minho had tackled him, that instead kept growing and growing into something that would either destroy or make the world anew. Thomas swallowed and reached out to grasp Newt’s hand once more.

“I was taking no chances, Newt. I can’t lose you again, I won’t,” Thomas whispered.

Newt traced his thumb over Thomas’s knuckle and it felt like a brand of heat searing through his skin—how could Newt not feel this, too? He had to. He had to know. This had been growing between the two of them for so long that it was almost unbelievable that it had taken them that long to get this far, that they had put it off for so long.

“Tommy, you’re—”

“Thomas!” Ben yelled from where he now stood in the door frame, flanked by Frypan and Minho. “Dan’s just shouted down from the Berg, you need to get up there. Now.”

Thomas glared so fiercely at Ben before glancing significantly down at where his and Newt’s hands still lay entwined. Ben at the very least looked apologetic before he spoke again. “I’m sorry man, but it’s Janson. He’s calling again and… we hear screams in the background.”

Thomas was off that bed and running before Ben finished speaking.

It wasn’t until he was halfway there that he realized Newt was running alongside him, and that Newt still held Thomas’s hand as tightly as he had before.

 

 

The screams and cries echoed with a metallic sting off of the walls of the Berg and stabbed into Thomas’s soul with every disjointed repetition. The cockpit was full of people though none of them turned when Thomas and Newt entered—their eyes were fixed on the screen in muted horror and rage.

Thomas found the source of the screams, no longer in the background of the hologram but instead at the forefront.

Gladers.

Thomas registered the machines they were hooked up to before he saw their faces—it was the one that Minho described, the one that served up nightmare after nightmare on a silver platter, so they could harvest some chemical from their brains.

More bullshit science.

Chuck.

Sonya.

Doug.

There were more hooked up to the stands and wires but those were the only three you could see clearly; the others were just limbs and indecipherable. Once again Thomas felt that horrible twist in his stomach at knowing that yes, these three were alive and didn’t die in the crash.

But at what cost were they still breathing?

All three of them were bruised and pale, their faces were gaunt and twisted in terror.

That was the skinniest Thomas had ever seen Chuck, and the sight made rage boil in his veins once again, all sense of peace from finding Newt had vanished.

Newt’s grip on Thomas’s hand loosened and fell away, a quick glance showed that he’d curled his palms into white-knuckled fists in his fury.

Thomas felt the world go silent despite the angry muttering and crying that came from all around the room. He felt the world go silent, silent and cold, and everything nearly went black when the hologram shifted away from their friends and instead to Janson’s sneering and greasy face.

“Hello, Thomas,” Janson trilled. “Lovely to see you found my lost property, though not all of it unless you’ve got the others hidden somewhere.”

Thomas said nothing.

Newt said nothing.

They waited, and the Four Horsemen drummed their beat on Thomas’s bones in the silence that followed.

“What?” Janson asked. “No witty remark? No clever response or teenage rebellion?”

Thomas felt two solid taps on the inside of his wrist, Newt was following his lead on this one, and in response Thomas circled Newt’s wrist with his fingers and told him to _hold_ , grateful that the camera did not pan down far enough to capture their fingers, so Janson had no idea they were communicating.

Silence.

They waited.

“I must say, I’m disappointed!” Janson exclaimed. “I’ve grown so used to your little quips that I find I quiet miss them now…”

Thomas didn’t take the bait, and neither did anyone else standing behind him.

 _Make sure Harriet stays quiet,_ Thomas told Rachel.

 _I’ve got her,_ she replied. _But you might wanna make this quick._

Silence.

“Well at least I’ve got young Teresa here for company,” Janson used her name like a weapon, placing it on the board with such forced nonchalance Thomas could tell that Janson was sure of it’s effectiveness. “She does tell the best stories, doesn’t she Thomas?”

Thomas felt Newt’s hand tapping against his thigh; _-tap-taptap-taptap-taptap-_.

It was meant to resemble a raised heartbeat, the fast pumping of blood through the skin when you’re in _danger, danger, be on your guard_. It was difficult for Thomas not to roll his eyes at the signal—yes, it was clearly a trap, and Thomas wasn’t going to fall for it.

Not even if Janson having Teresa could be worse for them than him having almost anyone else, if he turned her to his side.

Again.

“She’s become ever so much more cooperative now that we’ve given her back her memories, Thomas,” Janson taunted. The hologram shifted to show Teresa standing off to the side, staring with some measure of concern and pain at Chuck where he twitched and cried, lost in his worst fears. “But then again you’d know all about memories, wouldn’t you Thomas?”

Still, Thomas said nothing. The quieter he was the more Janson would speak, the more information he would volunteer. Thomas shook with the effort it took not to end that phone call, but he couldn’t. Not when Janson was visibly getting angrier and angrier by the second and clearly about to crack.

“Fine. If that’s how it’s going to be I’ll get straight to the point! One of these little shits isn’t immune, and after great pains on my part I’ve exposed them to the Flare,” Janson smiled, and Thomas’s heart stopped. “Mind you in the struggle I lost a perfectly viable test subject, so now I’ve decided it’s best to just keep them all hooked up to the machine as a method of crowd control. Even the little baby Crank.”

No.

The hologram shifted once more, back to Chuck, where Thomas could see that there were no tubes connected to the young boy’s machines to collect the enzyme. Nothing.

His breathing came faster and in shorter bursts—his eyes ran over every visible inch of Chuck’s skin to look for signs of the virus but came back empty.

There was no sign, none, of whether or not it was a trick. Janson’s face came back into view and Thomas briefly considered the benefits of shooting a hologram.

“Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s talk business,” Janson said. “You know what will save him and that I’ve a very limited supply serum here to prolong his life. I’ll be generous, and I’ll give you three weeks worth of time to run about and discover the hard way that I’ve left you no other options. When that three weeks is up, or beforehand if you come to your senses sooner, I will allow one Berg and one Berg _only_ to fly into this city. Anything else will be shot down immediately. See you soon.”

The screen went black before Thomas had a chance to say a word in response.

Chuck.

There was no way, it wasn’t possible, not after all Thomas had gone through to keep the kid alive, not after every promise he’d made. There was no way.

“How quickly did you show?” Thomas asked Newt softly, without looking at him. He and Newt had never spoken about when exactly Newt had come down with the Flare, when his clock had begun ticking. They still didn’t have time for details, but a few specifics had suddenly become necessary.

“Quickly,” Newt muttered. “Or at least it felt quick to me. But I was also able to hide it, Tommy, just because we didn’t see anything doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

Fuck.

 

The time between the call with Janson blurred, and so did space. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to find himself in some sort of planning room around a large table with absolutely everyone in a large circle around them.  

He didn’t remember Jorge’s kind but brisk words, or Brenda’s apologetic smile.

But Thomas hadn’t been lost in anger, no. He’d been lost in thought. Planning. Calculating. Deciding. Newt remained quiet at his side, having given Thomas the lead earlier, though it was clear to Thomas that he was wrung up so tightly and brimming with an ire so deep it was difficult for Thomas to tell the source. Eventually, Thomas spoke.

“It changes nothing,” he said.

The effect was immediate.

And cacophony of voices and heated breath flooded the room but stopped when Thomas held up his hand.

“He’s given us three weeks, but we won’t need that long. Not with the cat out of the bag about Newt and I knowing the possibilities of what will happen, not with us not having to pretend,” Thomas explained.

“What about Ava?” Minho asked. It seemed that Ben had briefed everyone as a whole about Thomas’s actions, not just Newt. “What part does she play in this?”

“I’m not sure yet, honestly. Her role will be decided by what she discovers about that vial and how she reacts to it. We should know the answer to that in about a day or two. The main thing we need to be trying to puzzle out here is what all is going on inside that City. We need Teresa.”

Newt choked on air next to him and Thomas didn’t bother to hide his eyeroll. “Problem, Newt?”

Newt met his eyes and before the anger flashed Thomas saw a hint of something resembling pain, but that just didn’t make any sense.

Teresa was vital for several reasons; for one thing she still had her memories from before the Maze, which meant she potentially had information regarding any old outposts of the Right Arm or where their supply caches were—she might have information about the Safe Haven. Not that Newt knew any of that yet, but he _did_ know that Thomas had his doubts about the cure and that Teresa was the only person alive to successfully make it.

That she didn’t remember doing so wasn’t entirely relevant.

“Teresa,” Newt stated in disbelief.

“Yes, Teresa, Newt. Also known as the only person—” Thomas began to explain, but the pain resurfaced in Newt’s eyes only to be chased by yet more anger, and Newt pushed his hand out from his chest in the symbol that meant _not now_.

“No,” Newt said as he shook his head. “You know what? No. I’m not putting myself through this again _._ ”

Newt turned and stormed from the room, and Thomas saw red.

Yes, Newt felt betrayed by Teresa and blamed her so for many things, so did Thomas, but to behave like this when he _knew_ what Thomas needed her for, especially if Chuck _did_ have the Flare, was completely ridiculous.

Thomas looked out at the rest of the group only to see that half of them were confused, the other half weirdly understanding. Then again they didn’t know Thomas’s doubts over the cure, so of course they didn’t understand why she was important even though she might have betrayed them again.

“Go,” Ben said. “We got this.”

“Yeah, you say we have to wait a few days anyway? Meeting adjourned,” Minho added. “Go after him. I don’t care if you punch him or hug him, just don’t let him focus that rage or none of us will like the consequences.”

Thomas didn’t stop to ask questions or clarify, he just stomped his way out the door and the silence that entered his mind when Janson called, the dangerous rage, once again came to the surface. Teresa meant the cure, the cure meant that Thomas didn’t have to bury Newt again. Or Chuck. Or anyone, not from the Flare.

But not Newt, not again. Nothing else mattered. He could deal with Newt hating Thomas for sidelining him as long as he had decades to atone for it; Newt’s life wasn’t worth him allowing his rage to harm Teresa before Thomas knew for sure.

And this wasn’t the first time Newt had allowed his own hatred of her to cloud his judgement, but Thomas would ensure that it was the last.

One way or another.


	15. Crash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how the world ends.

Thomas was hot on Newt’s heels and when Newt attempted to slam the door of the bedroom he’d stormed off to, Thomas shot his hand out and caught the edge with a loud smack and sharp sting. It turned into a battle of wills; Newt’s face was flushed and his eyes bright with emotion, but Thomas ground his teeth and pushed harder against the door until he made a gap large enough to slip in through.

Thomas shoved Newt further inside and let the door slam behind him with a sound that shook the walls.

 Newt paced to the opposite end of the room and curled his palms into fists but said nothing. He stood facing away from Thomas, so Thomas took the opportunity to inspect his surroundings. He was in the room that he’d awoken in earlier—barren, yellowing walls encased a small space that contained nothing other than a small pile of belongings, lights strung up along the ceiling, a small stool and a large pallet of blankets and cushions that made up the bed.

The small pile of belongings was Newt’s. When Thomas was knocked out they’d put him in Newt’s bed. Even through the haze of his anger and frustration the thought that he’d been lying in Newt’s bed was nearly enough to sidetrack him, but he couldn’t shift focus. Not then, it was too important.

“You gonna tell me what the hell your problem is?” Thomas asked softly, dangerously, clearly on edge and trying to figure out just what the fuck he was supposed to be doing with his hands.

“No problem here,” Newt spat.

The words felt like daggers, almost sharp enough to slice skin and bone from the ferocity with which they were thrown.

“Don’t lie to me!”

As soon as Thomas growled the words, fire searing his soul and skin with every syllable, Newt spun around and gaped at him in disbelief. Disbelief that Thomas had _gone there,_ had used words that Newt had screamed against his will in a similar situation a lifetime ago.

Newt looked betrayed, and what was left of Thomas’s resolve hung in tatters and clung to life only on principle alone.

“Fine,” Newt whispered. “You want the truth, _Tommy_?”

The name was said like a poison injected directly to his bloodstream and Thomas immediately felt it’s effects.

“I’m bloody pissed at myself, that’s what _this_ is all about,” Newt said. It started out as a whisper but grew to a shout when he gestured all the around himself and the room and the space between he and Thomas at ‘this’.

Thomas felt his eyelids flutter and his head tilt because of all the things he expected, Newt being angry at himself was so far from the realm of possibility that it was almost comical. “You… what?”

Newt bit his lip and ran a hand through his hair before he shook his head and stared down at Thomas. “I, somehow, played myself not once but _twice_ because I bloody fooled myself into thinking that maybe—”

He cut himself off and buried his face in his hands for a moment. When he emerged he seemed quieter, more resigned, closed off. Newt closed his eyes and tried to speak again.

“I just feel that we have more important things to worry about than Teresa, alright?” Newt said. “I get that you’re in love with her, I really do, but for all we know she—”

“Excuse me?” Thomas yelped. “You wanna run that by me again?”

“She’s not the most important thing for us to be worried about Thomas! Chuckie might have the bloody Flare and you’re still concerned about her as your top priority!”

“Because she’s the only person who has actually managed to make the damn thing!” Thomas yelled. He gestured wildly with his arms and couldn’t stop the ringing in his ears from the speed at which Thomas finally began to connect the dots of Newt’s behavior since Teresa came up in the Box.

“Not in this timeline she didn’t! She doesn’t know how in this one, she doesn’t even know a cure exists! You don’t need to come up with bloody excuses mate, not when you’ve spent the whole time that we’ve been back figuring out how to save her! Even a blind man could see it,” Newt argued bitterly.

Thomas snapped.

“To save _her_?!” he yelled. “You think I’ve done all of this for _her?!_ ”

The wave of emotion roiling within Thomas was back and with every panted breath it gained power until it overtook Thomas completely—he was no longer in control, merely along for the ride. Newt made to speak again but Thomas threw out his hand to stop him and plowed forward overtop his stuttered syllables.

 “You think that it’s all been for her? Let me ask you something, Newt,” Thomas yelled. He couldn’t stop speaking, couldn’t lower his voice, couldn’t do anything other than let it all flow from him and marvel at the way his entire body seemed to tingle with the force of it. “D’you think it was Teresa that I was sobbing over that night on the beach where I was struck by lightning? That it was her death I replayed every time I so much as _blinked_?”

Newt’s mouth fell open the slightest bit and he started to shake his head, but Thomas was past the point of caring.

“You think that it was _Teresa_ I held on to so tightly that the universe itself _literally shifted_ to send me back? That _she_ is the person I travelled through time for, that _she_ is who I dove headfirst back into this hell for? That _she_ is who I’ve killed for, fought for, and quite possibly _actually died_ for?”

While he shouted Thomas had moved forward and backed Newt up so far that he was almost against the wall, but that didn’t matter. None of it mattered, not really, not when Newt was looking at Thomas in such a way that he’d never looked at him before. Not when Newt looked devastated, destroyed, like he was on the brink of something that had the ability to break him so thoroughly that he could never possibly be repaired.

The only sound he made was a small, broken, “What?”

Thomas moved even closer and pushed Newt flush against the wall behind him. There were scant inches between them and Thomas had to fight the physical pull that began in his navel and spread throughout his extremities every time he glanced down from Newt’s eyes to his lips.

He’d lived two lives, both short, and it felt as though Thomas had spent every second of each of them trying to find the perfect moment to have this conversation. Here it was, having found him instead. In reality he knew that he hadn’t spent every moment of his life actively thinking about this, but it all had built up to it. Every step, every move, every breath; it was all for this. For him. His voice was tremulous when he spoke, “Don’t make me say it, Newt.”

“Please,” Newt whispered; Thomas wanted nothing more than to chase the sound as it escaped his lips. There were no more interruptions, no more breaks, no more conscious choices to shove aside emotion for the cause when the only thing Thomas wanted out of this world was standing in front of him threatening to be destroyed by the strength of his own hope and fear.

“For you, Newt,” Thomas answered softly, his voice hoarse. “It was all for you, always has been.”

The sound that came from Newt was half sob and half revelation; and when Thomas was again struck by the urge to follow that sound with his mouth, he did.

It was light, uncertain. Almost more a feeling than an act, for all its significance. That feeling, that tremor that wrecked the foundation of everything Thomas was, that was it. That was the feeling of the world ending, crumbling, turning to dust at his fingertips...

…And being born again at the feel of Newt’s lips meeting his own.

Almost as quickly as he moved in, Thomas retreated. He backed up just enough so that he could see Newt’s eyes, though they were shut, and he shook from head to toe.

Thomas wasn’t prepared for when they opened.

He had all of a second to catch his breath as, for the first time since meeting him, the full force of Newt’s emotions was no longer hidden from view. His desire, his fear, his hope, his sorrow, his _love_ was written on his face—a truth that could no longer be ignored. Lips Thomas had only barely grazed let loose a strangled gasp, his only warning before Newt’s hand was in Thomas’s hair. The grip dragged him forward into Newt once more, and he caved.

His body, his soul, bowed into Newt and gave itself over to the wave of emotion that finally crashed into the two of them, over them, through them.

It was a desperate meeting of lips, but it was soft. Slow. Explorative.

Thomas’s fingers trembled when he brought them up to cup Newt’s jaw, but it was worth it to feel the way his skin moved and pressed into Thomas’s own. To hold the whole of his existence between his fingertips.

Newt’s lips were chapped, but Thomas could still taste the echo of mint on his tongue among the salt and copper tang of sweat. His heart beat like a drum out of his chest and Thomas nearly pinched himself to make sure this wasn’t a dream. He’d dreamt of this so many times before, in so many ways, but he’d written them off as a fluke. A distraction.

Oh, how wrong he’d been.

He felt his own lips tremble between each press against Newt’s, and the groan that filled the air when Newt took Thomas’s bottom lip between his teeth was surely his as well. Thomas had to pull away to gulp in a shallow breath and keep his composure, but he didn’t go far. He leaned his forehead down on Newt’s shoulder, but Newt followed him down and Thomas felt hot breath on the side of his neck. It was so overwhelming that it took him a moment to notice the two fingers pressing a solid line down his forearm, asking if he was alright.

The gesture was achingly sweet and sincere, but how could Newt focus on the warm swipe of his tongue beneath Thomas’s ear as well as trying to communicate? Thomas arched his neck and breathed out ‘yes’ in response, which was about all he could manage to do with the way his entire world narrowed down to the points of contact between the two of them.

It was enough.

Newt’s mouth pulled away from Thomas’s neck and his hands guided Thomas back up to where he again pulled Thomas in for a kiss—but that kiss wasn’t like the ones they’d shared only a few moments before.

It was confident and powerful, a statement. It took the fibers that made Thomas who he was a shredded them to make room for Newt to weave himself inside the same way his tongue pressed for entrance into Thomas’s mouth, an entrance he granted gladly.

Newt’s confidence was catching and soon he was an active participant in just not the kiss, but the exploration of bodies. Newt’s long fingers danced feather-light over Thomas’s clothing, and when Thomas slid his hands underneath Newt’s jacket and pushed it off of his shoulders he marveled at the feel of taut muscle that hid beneath thin pieces of fabric.

Too much fabric.

As if losing Newt’s jacket was the breaking of a dam, the next few moments were a fervor of quickly divesting clothing while trying to break the contact of their lips as little as possible. Their shirts disappeared easily enough, but in their haste to undo belts they lose their balance and Thomas’s hips pressed into Newt’s with a hard friction that left them both keening for more of it.

It was a sensation that Thomas had never dreamed existed and now that he did it was all he craved. His palms held Newt’s face when he broke their kiss so that he could _breathe_ , while their hips ground together and sent heat that melted his very bones. They gasped for air in time with the moving of their hips, Thomas was grateful for the wall behind Newt because he was certain that by then they would have collapsed without it.

Newt’s eyes looked black in the dim lighting, but the sight of his head thrown back and mouth open in soundless ecstasy was enticing enough for Thomas to stop thinking and start acting on instinct.

The feel of Newt’s pulse underneath his tongue was intoxicating—Newt’s loud groan at the contact even more so. They continued that like for an eternity, for minutes or years, before Newt’s fingers encircled Thomas’s wrist and told him to hold, to wait. When Thomas stilled he felt Newt guide him towards the bed and he shifted so that he could see his face. Newt’s expression made Thomas stumble over his feet because the only way he could think to describe it was… _intent_.

Thomas gulped and for the first time in all of this felt oddly vulnerable. This was new for him, strange, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do or how to do it. He knew the way that Newt hovered with them both by the bed was a question, both of them beyond words at that point, but Thomas didn’t know the right answer. The only one he was capable of was reaching out with two fingers and tapping them twice against the inside of Newt’s wrist, giving him complete control. Where Newt would lead, Thomas would follow.

That act marked the end of Newt’s tenuous grasp of self-control, and before Thomas recognized what was happening he was laying down on the bed and Newt had wrested him free of his trousers and underwear. He would have felt more self-conscious about it if he hadn’t been distracted by Newt stripping down just the same before kneeling over Thomas and stealing his lips in a kiss.

The kiss didn’t last long, it couldn’t, because the moment Newt leaned on top of Thomas and he felt all of that _skin_ burning into his own Thomas bucked and nearly threw him off. Newt managed to stay on the bed, but it was a near thing; Thomas felt the flush of embarrassment creep along his skin and closed to his eyes. Newt once again laid his body on top of Thomas’s and his thumb traced Thomas’s cheekbone until he opened his eyes to see the adoration and muted joy in Newt’s eyes.

It only took one kiss before his embarrassment vanished and his erection was hard and rubbing against Newt’s once again. The friction and slick press of where they leaked together made sparks crack underneath his skin, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. Thomas traced his hands down Newt’s back until they cupped his ass and pressed Newt’s hips down harder into his own. Newt hissed at the grind and scratched his nails into Thomas’s flesh, the slight pain made Thomas’s breath come faster.

Still, it wasn’t enough.

Their pre-come wasn’t enough to ease the glide of skin on skin and Thomas still felt… alone. Which was ridiculous considering he’d never felt closer to someone in his life, had never felt happier or more at ease than with Newt panting above him and licking into his mouth. But he needed more, desperately, intimately, completely.

Thomas tried to communicate this, but all he emitted was a few strangled syllables and a needy whine that made Newt’s pupils dilate more, if that was even possible.

Newt bent his head and kissed Thomas on his forehead before he got up and left the bed—Thomas had never felt a loss of contact more deeply than when he was suddenly bereft of Newt’s flesh hot against his own. When Newt returned it was with a small jar of aloe, the same jar that had been given to every Glader before they’d left the Maze.

Thomas raised an eyebrow at it, but Newt just shook his head and chuckled breathlessly before tapping his heart three times, _trust me_. A long look shared between them, a charge in the air that had Thomas’s flesh pebbling, a single nod in the darkness.

_I trust you._

His confusion only lasted until Newt smeared the aloe on his fingers and positioned Thomas’s legs so that he’d have easier access. That first press of Newt’s fingers inside of him opened up an entire new world for Thomas, a world where pain didn’t exist. Only Newt, and the single point of contact where they were entwined.

Thomas would never be able to look at Newt’s hands again without thinking of this, thinking of the desperate concentration on Newt’s face and the way his eyes zeroed in on where he pumped knuckle deep inside of Thomas. With each new finger he added Thomas’s worldview both narrowed and expanded—he couldn’t believe that there was a world that existed in which Newt and Thomas had never experienced this. Where Thomas hadn’t heard the way Newt choked on his breath when he curled his fingers inside of Thomas and Thomas cried out.

He wanted more. No, he needed more.

Thomas pushed back against Newt’s fingers until Newt simply held his hand still and let Thomas do all the work, but that didn’t last long before Newt withdrew his hands in a fevered motion and grabbed for the small jar once more. Thomas lay there, transfixed, when Newt worked his hand up and down his own cock to spread the lubricant. The way his muscles constricted and his body trembled was a gift, and one that Thomas would be thankful for every day for the rest of his life—however long it ended up being.

Thomas locked eyes with Newt and refused to break contact. He watched Newt align himself, watched him lean one arm down to support himself by Thomas’s face, watched the emotion and intensity break all over his face when he finally started the slow slide inside.

It hurt despite Newt’s preparation, and Thomas couldn’t keep that off of his face completely. He squeezed his eye’s shut against the pain of the intrusion and allowed the soothing sounds that came from Newt’s trembling voice to help him relax. One of Newt’s hands cupped Thomas’s face and the other tapped twice against Thomas’s knuckles, _It’s okay, I’m with you_.

Thomas nodded and opened his eyes, he grounded himself in Newt and felt his body shift to welcome him inside. Newt held himself still, so still, to let Thomas adjust and not push him too far too quickly… but Thomas was tired of waiting. He twisted his hand so that he could tap twice against Newt’s knuckles in return and moved his hips slightly to encourage Newt to do the same.

The movement sent stars flashing across his vision with every blink and had him hard and leaking on his stomach once more, the echo of pain from earlier vanished.

“ _Tommy_ ,” Newt whispered, the first word either of them had said in so long, and it drew Thomas’s attention from where their bodies met to Newt’s eyes. They were overfull with joy and emotion and discovery—with every small thrust inside of Thomas they flickered just a little, the same way Thomas’s heart stuttered at every movement within.

Thomas felt full in a way he’d never imagined possible, felt complete in a way he’d never known he needed. It was messy and uncoordinated, they were overenthusiastic, and their movements weren’t as smooth as they could have been, but the honesty in their motions and heated glances was pure in a way that couldn’t be explained.

Thomas halted his tracing of Newt’s torso over the spot where in another world, another lifetime, a scar would have been. A world where Thomas had never had this, had wasted his time, a world without Newt in it any longer. Tears brimmed his eyes, the emotion flowing through him at the sight of naked skin, but they were quickly wiped away by other hands.

Newt’s hand traced lightly down Thomas’s face in a gesture that they’d never used before, that Thomas didn’t know the exact meaning of, but he didn’t need to. They way it made him feel cherished and cared for was enough. Newt, was enough.

As their thrusts became more erratic and staccato Thomas reached his hands up above his head so he could entwine his fingers with Newt’s. When they kissed and gasped and cried out, Thomas redefined happiness.

 _This_ was happiness.

 _This_ was joy.

 _This_ was home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was _love._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading with me for so long, this was for all of you.
> 
> <3


	16. Pause

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after

_Heat._

_There was so much heat and so much pressure and his world was spinning, spinning, spinning, urged on by the fingers grasping his hips and the eyes that drank in every inch of fevered skin._

_He felt exposed in the most delicious of ways, on display for the only person who ever mattered, who thought he mattered in return, who tangled his limbs together with his own and lay there in languid contentment._

_There was heat, there was a cocoon of heat and laughter and love._

_There was sweat and sighing and stickiness and the unshakeable knowledge that nothing would ever be the same._

_There was skin and magic and vibration in his veins, fear and disbelief and tentative hope entwined into a heady mixture._

_But most importantly, there was heat._

_There was heat and the determination to never, never let go._

The air was stifling and stuck to him like a second, unwanted skin. Newt could feel a bead of sweat slowing falling down his spine and longed to swipe at it, to ease the itch it left in its wake, but his limbs were leaden and that would demand far more effort than he was willing to expend. Not then, not when he’d been so rudely awoken from the most wonderful of dreams.

Newt clung to the last vestiges of the foggy, sluggish world between sleep and wakefulness with all he had… until he realized that instead of his fingers tightening on the kindest vision that had ever graced the back of his eyelids, they tightened on flesh. Skin.

Heat.

Ice water flushed his veins and Newt opened his eyes with a jolt, shaken by the feel of another body curled up so very near his own.

The slight gasp of air that escaped when his eyes caught up with his brain sounded loud in his own ears, but Thomas still curled up in slumber, unaffected. Newt’s sudden movements hadn’t woken him, and neither did the bubble of giddy laughter that sprung from his lips before he could stop it. Newt covered his mouth with both hands as soon as the laugh registered in his mind and then fell back onto the mound of blankets and pillows that made his bed.

He didn’t trust himself not to make noise, not to scream from the bloody windows that it hadn’t been a dream at all, that Thomas had come to him, had opened his eyes to a different reality than the one in which he’d thought he’d lived.

_“For you, Newt. It was all for you, always has been.”_

Newt had no idea how long he lay back, staring in disbelief at the ceiling and trying to smother the sounds of his laughter and the movement of his shoulders as he shook.

Eventually his shocked laughter eased, and he permitted himself to turn and look at his bedmate once more.

Thomas lay curled with one arm cushioning his neck and the other reaching out towards Newt, fingers curled in the worn cotton blankets as though angry that it wasn’t what they wanted to be holding. His body had a new collection of marks, albeit temporary ones, that joined with the moles and freckles and scars as though painted on canvas with special care.

Proof, evidence, of the night they’d shared.

For only a moment Newt kept himself from reaching out, touching, before he remembered that he was _allowed_ and that he could bloody well touch as much as he damn well pleased.

Despite the thick air and sheen of sweat that pooled in the crevices of muscle, Thomas’s skin felt cool to the touch. Cool and yet electric, each trail left by Newt’s fingers evoked a memory so strong it was a drug to his senses. Slowly he traced his fingertips along every mark on Thomas’s skin that he could see, every mark that had been put there both by nature and himself. He was so entranced, so consumed by his chosen task, that he hadn’t noticed when Thomas had woken up. His eyes were just… open. Open and crinkled at the corners, clearly watching Newt’s exploration and taking no exception to it.

Feeling bold, Newt maintained eye contact and repeated a motion used only once before. He trailed his fingers feather light from Thomas’s forehead to his chin before altering his path to cup his cheek. Thomas brought his hand and placed it over newt’s own until they were both there, facing each other, Newt cupping his cheek and Thomas’s hand over top, in total silence.

What do you say after the best night of your life?

“Mornin’, Tommy,” Newt whispered.

Right, yes, perfect. Picture of bloody eloquence, that.

Thomas smiled in such a way that it eclipsed the rays of sun intruding from the window and Newt felt his heart clench in an ache both familiar and new. Familiar in that it was a feeling newt had grown to associate with the man in front of him, yet new in that it surfaced without the bitter aftertaste it used to leave behind. It was untainted. Perfect. It was—

“Hi.”

—even less eloquent than Newt, apparently.

“How’d you sleep?” Newt asked fondly, amused at himself for even bothering to worry about eloquence.

“I don’t even remember closing my eyes, honestly.”

For a moment, fear. Did he mean that he didn’t remember what had happened? Or that sleep claimed him without his permission? Or maybe he remembered some but not all or—

“I hope that’s the only thing you don’t remember?” Newt asked. No point in letting his mind get ahead of him, not when he could just ask plainly. Something he should have apparently done a very long time ago, on any number of occasions. His question earned another smile, another flip in his chest, another band loosened around his lungs.

“I don’t think even a Swipe would be able to take the memory of last night away from me, Newt. And I would kill anyone who tried.”

As romantic confessions went it was a bit unorthodox, but the meaning behind the statement was what truly mattered. Perhaps some would be unsettled to hear that Thomas would kill to keep his memory of Newt… but to him? There were no words sweeter.

“Good that,” Newt responded.

They lapsed into a calm silence that Newt was loathe to break, drinking in each other’s eyes and basking in their presence. It was madness, really. How many times had he and Thomas shared a blanket in the Scorch? Or simply fallen asleep on each other? Newt vividly remembered a night not too long after they escaped the Facility the first time around: He had first watch, Thomas used Newt as a pillow and put enough pressure against his leg for him to relax. And that had only been the beginning. For months on end he and Thomas danced around each other—always on the edge but just out of reach. They slept next to each other, existed with one another, but they never did it _together_. Not in the way Newt had longed for.

How long?

How much time had they wasted?

“I can see you thinking,” Thomas said. His voice was whisper thin, as though he was ashamed of himself for breaking the easy quiet that encompassed them.

Of course Tommy would choose then, of all times, to be perceptive. Or at least to voice his perceptions. How much did Newt think Thomas had missed when in actuality Thomas had just chosen not to voice it?

“I’m thinkin’ about every time I almost said something, almost did something, but talked myself out of it,” Newt answered.

Thomas blew out a large puff of air and closed his eyes, “There were so many times, Newt. I swear. Sitting here thinking about it I can pinpoint every moment where I almost acted on what I felt, even though I didn’t have a damn clue what that was.”

“Oh?”

It’s not that Newt needed his ego stroked, not like he needed the validation, but he’d been operating under the impression that Thomas was in love with someone else for practically the entire time they’d known each other. A few details wouldn’t necessarily be remiss.

“Do you remember the lightning storm?” Thomas asked.

Newt’s muscles tensed at the question, because of course he did. It was awful and terrifying—watching Thomas fall onto the ground and having that moment of unease over whether or not he’d ever move again was not one of his happier memories.  

“Of course I do,” Newt answered. How could he forget? Sometimes he could still feel the charge in the air, dancing along his pebbled skin.

“Then, when we were pressed together, almost. But that’s not the real one. There’ve been so many times…”

“What’s the real one then?”

“You asked me a question, once,” Thomas explained. “Well, all you said was my name. Just ‘Tommy’, but it was a question all the same. We were talking about Home, and if it could be a person. Do you remember?”

He did. They’d taken the watch after a party and had stayed up far too late talking about anything and everything; at one-point things had shifted, the tone had changed, and Newt had considered allowing himself to hope. But he didn’t, because…

“Just like before, like last night, you said ‘Don’t make me say it’. I walked away.” Newt whispered in awe. What would have happened if he hadn’t left the truck? What if he’d stayed?

Thomas cleared his throat and looked away, ashamed. “Yeah, then. I wanted to follow you, to tell you, to see where the tugging between the two of us would lead. I wanted so badly to follow you, Newt.”

He had to ask the question, though he wasn’t sure what good knowing the answer would do him.

“Why didn’t you?” Newt asked.

“I just… it didn’t seem right. There was so much going on, so much we needed to do. I was trying to keep us all alive and I just kept telling myself that there would be time, eventually. Later. When things were calmer, and I could figure out my own head—later. Live first, that was the goal.” Thomas answered. Written all over his face was how well that plan had worked out—not too long after that night everything had started going downhill. They’d found Cranks, the group split, Joe died… the hits just didn’t stop coming. Every time they felt like they’d had a handle on everything the world smashed them down once more.

And then Newt had died.

‘Later’ never came.

“There’s more to livin’ than just bein’ alive, Tommy,” Newt said. He placed his fingers on Thomas’s chin and turned his head so that he wasn’t looking away in shame anymore. They were close, so close, and his grip on Tommy’s chin was begging him to close the distance.

“Yeah,” Tommy breathed. “I figured that out a little while ago, actually.”

Newt squinted in confusion, “When?”

Suddenly Tommy was staring at him—focused and magnetic. It was a look that always shattered any resistance Newt had, he was incapable of the pull that came with it. Thomas was overwhelming in all the right ways, a force of nature that you either allowed to crush you or that you joined along in the ride.

“The second time you were taken from me,” Tommy said.

Newt kissed him, hard.

Pressing.

Pushing.

Reassuring.

It was less clumsy than their kisses before, less frantic, less soul-rending. It wasn’t as though newt was trying to make up for lost time, he wasn’t, it was more a celebration.

They’d gone through hell together, more than once, and had proven a thousand times over that they were willing to do anything for one another. Who cares what buggin’ road they took to get there? Tommy was warm and pliant in his arms, his lips opened wide for his tongue, and his scratchy voice whispered Newt’s name in something akin to both a praise and a beg.

What else mattered?

What could compare to the bubble of warmth and light and joy that overtook Newt, that wave that washed away his worries and his fears? There was more they would need to talk about, of course. Mountains of misunderstandings and stories that would need to be told to clear the air… but Newt had woken up with Thomas; Newt was _happy_.

He’d never felt happy before, not like that.

Who gave a shuck about the details?

“Wait, hold on I’ve gotta ask you something,” Thomas pulled away from their kiss to ask.

Thomas apparently, gave a shuck about the details. Bloody hell.

“What?” Newt grunted. His eyes were fixed on Thomas’s mouth where it moved, still slick and swollen from Newt’s claiming.

“How do you know what you’re doing?” Thomas rushed out. The blush that covered every inch of usually pale flesh was endearing, but that didn’t help with the confusion Newt felt at the odd question.

“What’re you goin’ on about, Tommy?”

Thomas cleared his throat, and then he did it again. And again.

“Bloody hell mate spit it out!” Newt chuckled.

“Last, uh, last night? You… you, um. You were pretty confident?”

Oh.

That.

Newt had to use every last bit of his waning self-control not to laugh at the way Tommy’s face was screwed up in confusion, discomfort, and hope. _That’s_ what he was worried about?

“What? Should I not have been confident?” newt asked with a raised eyebrow and a mock offended air. Thomas was clearly bothered, he shouldn’t have pushed him, but making him squirm was too much fun. He couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

“N-no! I mean yes! I mean, that’s not what I meant!” Thomas spluttered. Newt’s heart grew from watching the fumbling, he had to put him out of his misery. “I just! Did you… with Dan… I mean is that how you learned...?”

Dan?

“Thomas are you jealous of Dan?” Newt asked in bemused shock. He was going to smack Frypan when he saw him for telling that bloody story about Newt drunk and belligerently informing Dan that he was too attractive. It didn’t even matter that this Frypan wasn’t guilty of the crime, somewhere there was a Frypan responsible for this conversation and Newt firmly believed that if he hit one Frypan hard enough the other would feel it and hopefully just _know_.

“…do I need to be?” Thomas countered.

Newt sighed.

“No, love, you don’t need to be jealous of anyone. Ever. Trust me on that, yeah?” He informed Thomas fond smile perhaps permanently glued to his face. “The only reason I had any idea of what I was supposed to be doing was because _someone_ had to track down whoever was stealing all of Frypan’s almond oil, and Gally talks too bloody much when he’s drunk. I know far more about that man than I ever cared to know.”

Not that the information didn’t come in handy, like Gally had threatened it would one day, but no one ever needed to inform him of that. Well, out loud anyway. It would become obvious once they all met up again that he and Thomas had finally gotten their lives together and made a bloody move… but Newt would deal with the teasing when it happened. How bad could it be?

“What did you just call me?” Tommy asked, eyes wide and lips parted.

Newt snorted.

“Really? _That’s_ what you pick up on?” Newt grinned at the way Tommy’s face battled between joy and irritation… he decided that he’d rather have joy. He softened his voice and placed a kiss on Tommy’s brow before continuing, “I called you _love_ , love. That alright with you?”

He supposed from the way that Tommy kissed him like a drowning man taking a breath that he didn’t mind the new nickname, but soon his mind was far too busy to think any further on the topic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have never written anything this fluffy in my goddamn life, i have a damn toothache. I hope you're happy.
> 
>  
> 
> Sorry about how long it took, I came off of 12's and then got sick, and then had to catch up on what I fell behind with when i was sick.
> 
> Thank you for reading and commenting, as always!


	17. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They saw everything coming.... except that.

He knew there was no way that the fact that he’d never resurfaced last night, and that he didn’t resurface until well after midday, wouldn’t go unnoticed. The only question that remained was who would say something first, and what would they say?

Thomas left the bathing area as Newt entered it and the knowing warmth in Newt’s eyes nearly sidetracked Thomas all over again; the only reason he limited himself to a quick tap of knuckles was because they were in a public area and his stomach was demanding food. When had he last eaten? Judging by the way his mouth started salivating at the smell of what was undoubtedly Frypan’s cooking the answer wasn’t a good one.

It wasn’t awful, he’d been far skinnier during the long months they’d hunted for Minho, but just because he couldn’t quite feel his ribs yet didn’t mean he shouldn’t be eating more. Food was strength, and they would all need as much of it as they could get for the coming weeks.

Thomas rounded a corner and nearly walked directly into Minho, who was leaned against the door the wonderful scent was coming from, casually eating some kind of fold-over with meat and cheese. Minho stopped still at the sight of Thomas, his food halfway to his mouth, before he lowered the food and gave Thomas a once-over.

Then he grinned.

“So…” Minho began. Thomas shook his head slowly and tried to back away, but Minho was like a predator, he kicked himself off of the wall and moved forward with Thomas. When Thomas stopped, Minho circled him.

“Listen, Minho,” Thomas tried, but Minho held up a hand and cut him off.

“So, I take it you understand now? I’d offer to give you the talk but, uh, I think that maybe Newt gave you a crash course in body language already.”

Minho was a shark, at the first sign of blood he’d go into a frenzy and Thomas knew it, but he couldn’t help the blush that rose to his cheeks or the pleased smile on his face.

“I knew it! I shuckin’ knew it, Greenie. I called that klunk since day one, the two of you staring heart eyes at each other and crying to sleep each night cause you’re blinder than a worm in water!” Minho was all but crowing his delight, food in his hand completely forgotten.

“Minho that doesn’t even make sense!” Thomas countered. Surely Minho would be the worst of it, and once Thomas got through this he could go about his day like normal. His teasing wasn’t _too_ bad—

 _“’Oh Minho, Thomas loves Teresa not me, what ever shall I do?’”_ Minho mocked in a voice far too high pitch to be Newt’s, but the clumsy accent made it clear who he was imitating. Then his voiced dropped lower in octave and the accent dropped, exchanged for a rough and scratchy tone that Thomas supposed was supposed to represent him. But he didn't sound like that, did he? “ _’I’m too busy leading everyone and being angsty over my troubled past to notice that Newt’s making heart eyes from across the room, grr! Anger! Man tears!’”_

Thomas squinted at Minho, lost in his own world and making childish motions of a person making out, before making the snap decision to dart forward and steal the fold-over from Minho’s hand and walk backwards through the door to the kitchen area.

Minho was so busy cackling at himself he didn’t even notice.

Thomas took a large bite of the food and groaned with pleasure at the taste—this beat rehydrated foil packs any day of the week and suddenly Thomas was ravenous. Or, at least he was until he walked into a room of smirking people who’d stopped their meals to stare at him.

For a moment there was a tense, anticipatory silence. No one moved, no one spoke, until Ben held out a cup of water for Thomas to take. There was a commiserating sympathy in his eyes as he did it, like he knew the food in Thomas’s mouth suddenly felt impossible to swallow under the stares of so many and the ribbing that was sure to follow. Before Thomas fully grasped the cup, Frypan spoke.

“Nah Ben, he don’t need that,” Frypan grinned. “Tommy-boy here quenched his thirst last night, didn’t he?”

The room erupted in laughter and Thomas nearly choked on his food before he managed to swallow it and take a grateful gulp of water. The moment he could, Thomas gasped out a sentence that no one heard the first time. As the laughter died down he cleared his throat and tried again.

“Don’t call me that,” Thomas told Frypan, who raised his eyebrow in a Gally-worthy pose.

“And why not?” Frypan asked.

“… I don’t like nicknames.”

Ben snorted into his own drink, and half the room started coughing as well, and with either the best or worst timing on the planet Newt walked into the room. He was red from the tips of his ears to the collar of his shirt and laughter could be heard in the distance before the door closed again. Newt’s eyes flicked over Thomas and the laughing room only once before he spoke.

“Y’alright, Tommy?” Newt asked, positivity forced into his tone.

The room started laughing once more and Thomas slumped his shoulders in defeat.

 _I’ve got Minho cornered in a different part of the place if you’d like to make your escape now,_ Rachel told him. _I can hear the laughter all the way over here._

 _Do I want to know how you cornered him?_ Thomas asked. He grabbed a few more fold-overs and another glass of water for Newt and started to edge his way closer to the door.

 _Probably not. Outside is your best bet, just Jorge and Harriet out there,_ she answered.

Thomas repressed a shudder and all but pushed Newt out of the room before he yelled over his shoulder at Frypan and the room at large, “Let me rephrase, only _he_ can give me nicknames.”

Frypan held out a cup as if in a toast and Ben smiled sadly at them as they went. Thomas wondered what kind of nicknames Gally had for Ben that caused him to look sad at the mention… they needed to reunite with Gally sooner rather than later, if only so that Ben would smile for real again.

“Only I can give you nicknames, eh? Do I want to know what I missed?” Newt teased.

“Oh, slim it.”

 

 

The grin Harriet gave them was full of mischief and sadness, but she held her tongue and let the two of them pass without saying a word. Outside of the safe house there was a small courtyard, lower on the cliff than where the Berg had landed, that had dry, cracked, stone walls that were the perfect height for sitting.

They ate their lunch in a nervous yet somehow still comfortable silence. In the bedroom the change in their relationship felt natural, concrete, solid… but out in the open and mocked (albeit in good-natured ribbing) still felt odd. Thomas wasn’t sure what all was allowed or how Newt felt about all of it, all he had to go on was the pink tinge to Newt’s cheeks and the small pleased smile that graced his lips whenever their knees touched.

Which when he thought about it was probably answer enough.

After all they’d been through they deserved this, and the fact that the only discomfort they felt came from their friends laughing at them… well. Thomas remembered a different version of events where laughter was far more seldom, and less carefree.

Maybe their world could stand to have a little more laughter in it.

“I can literally feel you thinking over there, mate,” Newt said. “Just slim it down, yeah? S’alright, really. Knew it was gonna happen.”

Thomas smirked at the strength of Newt’s accent, always a sure marker of his mood. “You’re right, I’m just planning what to do next, plus I’m kind of curious about something.”

“What’s that then?”

“Well, if Jorge and Brenda had a safe house stocked up like this, why didn’t they take us here while we wandered aimlessly around the Scorch?”

Newt took a moment to consider Thomas’s words before he shrugged them off and took another bite of food.

“Could be tons of reasons, really,” Newt mused. “For one thing I don’t think we were ever in this exact area, plus the amount of people we had wouldn’t have fit in this place nearly as well. As it is I’m certain some of us had to kip in the buggin’ Berg last night so there’d be enough space.”

“Fair point,” Thomas conceded. “How’s it been with them? Weird?”

Newt shrugged again. “No weirder than it’s been with anyone I s’pose. S’not that same, but it could get there. Still the same people, y’know? Brenda is still as prickly as ever but that’s what we’ve always loved about her.”

Thomas smiled at the memories of Brenda that came, unbidden, to the forefront of his mind. She’d truly become their sister in so many ways and the loss of that stung, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get it back. With time, something they would have plenty of at Haven, their relationship could grow again. It would no longer be something forged through fire and blood and sweat and tears, it would never feel the same as what they’d _earned_ once before, but that didn’t make it worth less.

In fact, that might even make it worth more, simply for the amount of effort he would have to put into it.

“Just talk to her, you’ll feel better for it,” Newt suggested.

“Always tryin’ to get me to talk to people,” Thomas teased. Newt smirked back at him.

“Worked well enough the first time ‘round, yeah?”

Thomas bumped shoulders with him in answer, and their easy silence appeared once again. It lasted until Jorge came jogging up the path to the house, slightly out of breath and more than a little uncertain.

“Hey, hermano, you know that calling card you sent out?” Jorge yelled up at them, nodding towards Newt.

For a moment Newt’s head tilted in confusion before it cleared and left behind a hint of fear.

“You mean the flare?” Newt asked.

Jorge nodded and pointed to a fast-approaching vehicle at the base of the path leading to the house, “Looks like someone else decided to answer it!”

Thomas and Newt shared a glance as they decided how to react. It took only seconds of them reading each other’s eyes, their body language, before they were tapping out instructions to each other and Newt passed control back to Thomas.

He allowed himself a moment to shiver at the memory of when _exactly_ it was that Thomas had given it to Newt before; the moment passed, he reached for the knives on his hip, and started to deal with the situation.

 _Rachel, grab the others and some weapons. Newt will meet you at the entrance,_ Thomas instructed. _We’ve got company._

 _Well, shit,_ she answered. Her mental voice sounded out of breath and Thomas deliberately didn’t think about why that might be—no time for that. Not when they might be faced with yet another threat. _Coming from land or sky? Minho wants to know._

_Land, skies are clear._

_Good that, boss._

The phrase threw Thomas for a second before he realized that she was probably just relaying Minho’s words down the line—not for the first time Thomas lamented at how much easier life could be if they were all able to speak telepathically.

Someone came jogging down from where newt just disappeared, the distinct sounds of a shotgun being loaded told Thomas that it was Harriet. No matter the timeline it seemed some things about a person just couldn’t be changed, despite only just beginning to train with the weapon it looked as at home in Harriet’s arms as the three throwing knives Newt had scavenged for Thomas and given him that morning felt in his fingers.

“You any good with those?” Harriet asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

He ached to have the small, deliberate calluses he’d grown on his fingertips from long months of arduous practice. It took him ages to be any good and he’d lost his knives in a fight that he never wanted to have happen, and not gotten them back before the Last City. They would’ve come in handy when facing Janson, but it would be fine. Callus or no his mind remembered what needed to be done.

“Better than you are with that shotgun, for now at least,” Thomas teased. He decided that he would regain his casual friendships with everyone by sheer force of will alone. If he just kept pretending they were already the best of friends, eventually they’d all just give in and go with it.

In theory, at least.

“Guess we’re about to find out,” she said. Harriet raised her shotgun and jutted her chin out at the large white van that neared their position.

Jorge came up to stand behind Thomas and his pistols were drawn as well. While this wasn’t the typical welcome that WCKD would normally drop in, Thomas wouldn’t put it past them to try getting a little more creative.

Thomas could hear steps coming from behind them, their backup if it was needed. The van parked far enough away not to be considered a threat and the door flew open almost before the engine stopped humming.

“For shuck’s sake Greenie, if you shoot me I’m actually gonna kill you!”

Thomas was struck dumb as a tall, pale figure rounded the side of the van with his arms up in the air and a grumpy expression on his face. An expression that cleared as pale eyes fixed on something, or some _one,_ over Thomas’s right shoulder.

“ _Gally?’_ Ben gasped in a broken whisper.

Gally moved fast enough to be a Runner, and Ben leapt from his position to meet him and dropped his weapon in the process. They met each other in the middle; arms squeezed tight as they met each other in a glorious and passionate kiss. It was the kind of kiss that affected everyone who saw it—you could visibly see the tension drain out of both of them. They balanced each other out, they shared strength and calm and steadiness. It was fascinating to watch and at one point in time it would’ve caused Thomas to feel insanely jealous. As it was, he glanced over at Newt who’d come to stand beside him. Newt looked transfixed at the pair—as did everyone else—and as Thomas let his fingers lightly brush Newt’s he heard a small, quiet, breath, “Bloody hell.”

An eternity passed before they broke apart. Gally was out of breath and Ben was looking at Gally like he held the answers to the universe.

“Hi,” Gally whispered. He brought his palm up to cup Ben’s face and allowed his thumb to graze Ben’s cheek.

“Hey,” Ben replied, breathless.

They stood there holding each other’s faces and looking into each other’s eyes for several minutes before Gally leaned down and placed his forehead on Ben’s. 

It was a beautiful and pure moment, and Thomas hated to intrude, but—

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Thomas said dumbly.

Gally didn’t move from his position and neither did Ben, “Neither are you.”

“Okay, yes, but I know how I came to be here… what the fuck, Gally?”

Gally sighed and stepped away from Ben, though not before he entwined their fingers together and held fast. Thomas delicately ignored the tears slowly falling down Ben’s face as his friend tried to pull himself together. Thomas understood the relief he was feeling, and it was a potent emotion that wouldn’t be denied easily.

“Would you be happier to see me if I said I brought friends?” Gally asked. He made a gesture at the van and the passenger side door slowly opened. “Don’t worry, I already explained the freaky time-travel klunk and how you all knew each other. They took it well.”

Thomas wrecked his brain trying to figure out just who the hell Gally could’ve found that he’d know enough about to be able to convince. Once again, his mind flashed back to the conversation in the showers of the Glade; Thomas had told him all he could about the Right Arm and the people they’d met in it, and even a little bit about their fates.

Still, he wasn’t prepared to see Manny step out of the van.

“Holy shit,” Thomas said in disbelief. His heart was pounding fast, but of _course_ they hadn’t died in the bombing. Manny, Fran, and Ian hadn’t joined up with the Right Arm until after the raid which wouldn’t have been for another few weeks at least.

“Do we know them?” Minho asked gently from where he looked at the shell-shocked expressions on his and Newt’s faces.

“You never met them, but yes,” Thomas whispered.

Sure enough, Manny moved to the side door of the van and opened it only to help pull Fran outside. In her arms was a bundle that could only be Ian and Thomas’s heart felt like it was about to burst. These people had become his family and now to have them back—

Quickly Thomas started doing math in his head and using what he knew of their backstory to try and put together the pieces, and as he did he started to hope. Because maybe, just maybe—

Sure enough, Manny reached into the van one more time and pulled out a man that Thomas had never seen before, though his jacket featured in more of Thomas’s memories than he could count. That must be Larry, which meant—

Beside him Newt choked, clearly coming to the same realization that Thomas had. Newt reached out and clutched Thomas’s arm tightly; in desperation, in hope, in pain, Thomas had no idea. Newt’s eyes were larger than Thomas had ever seen them, focused on that van and how Manny once again reached inside of it. One more person exited that van, a face they’d loved and cherished and mourned. Newt made a sound that was half sob and half gasp, a choked noised that sounded absolutely _wrecked_ and Thomas wasn’t far off from making the same one.

The last person to exit the van took a look at the large group of teenagers and focused on Thomas and Newt, clearly the ones most affected by their appearance, and smiled.

“Hello, boys,” he said.

 

 

It was Joe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who know who Joe is: HI THERE! YOU'RE WELCOME! I told you this fic was a fix-it.... not my fault if you thought the only thing I was fixing was canon. *shrugs*
> 
> For those of you who don't know Joe: I've mentioned before something called 11!verse, and how the fic 'Talk Me Home' by comebacknow was essentially a prequel for my story. This is where Joe, Manny, Fran, and Ian come from. Bianca is writing what happened in the 6 months between TST and TDC, and you all seriously need to read it. Not only because it'll help you to understand so much more about my story, but because it is an absolutely BEAUTIFUL piece of writing and if you love Newtmas and character development you will love it as much as I do.
> 
> This is the link to that story, please just read it: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13874430/chapters/31919943


	18. Fog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Newt is going to take away Tommy's planning privileges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Pride everyone!! Almost at the end of this one, just two more chapters left!! Then we get onto Part 3 and hit the ground running. Whoop Whoop!
> 
> I love you all, hope you enjoyed!

Ghosts.

Ghosts that haunted and hunted, plagued and tormented, clung to his skin and whispered endlessly—ghosts parted before him as he started to move forward. They granted him that moment of peace and respect, that breath of understanding awe at the figure not fifteen paces ahead.

Joe.

Joe was alive, was in front of him, was smiling.

_Joe._

Newt let go of Thomas’s arm and took a step forward, then another, and then he was sprinting just as quickly as his bloody leg would take him.

It wasn’t logic that drove him but impulse, an aching crater that had died so many months ago and died again when he heard of the bombing of the Right Arm. But he was an idiot, they’d done everything so much faster _of course_ Joe hadn’t joined the Right Arm, yet he’d been so blind, so stupid, so—

His arms collided with Joe and wrapped around him, hard. As he squeezed he was made aware of a high, keening sort of whine that was apparently coming from his own buggin’ throat, but he didn’t care. Joe was alive, was breathing, was hugging him back and holding him close despite never seeing Newt before in his life. Well, this version of it. All he’d had to go on was whatever Gally’d told them based off of whatever Tommy’d told Gally—for all Newt knew, Joe was only aware that they were time travelers and the last time Joe hadn’t made it.

But he would this time.

Newt would make sure of it.

Never again.

“There ya go, cry it all o—oof!” Joe was interrupted by a second body slamming into them and hugging, fiercely hugging. Evidently Thomas decided that Newt had had Joe to himself for long enough at the moment.

“They didn’t do this whenever they saw us alive again, what makes this shank so special?”

“They were trying to keep their secret, slinthead.”

“No they weren’t! Thomas told anyone that would listen that he was from the future!”

“That’s different, he was at least a little bit discreet about it.”

“Okay, but—”

An agonized sigh broke through the argument brewing and Gally’d decided to play peacekeeper for the moment.

“Joe died protecting Newt, trying to keep a Crank from getting him. This was after months of super special terror bonding, and in the end? Newt became a Crank anyway,” Gally explained. It’s not that he was callus in his explanation, but he’d said it in a way that someone who’d not felt that level of terror and pain before could say it. The magnitude of the event fell flat, like that. But the silence returned, and Newt was again able to let some of the old guilt and fear and destructive sadness ebb away, if only for a little while longer. Long enough to pull away from Joe and begin to speak—

“Holy shit is that a _baby_?! Gally brought a baby!”

A loud wave of murmurs and craning necks ruined the moment but did nothing to alter the kind eyes on Joe’s face. Newt felt a quick line drawn down his forearm and nodded at Tommy in response; he was fine, or as close to fine as he was likely to get under the circumstances. 

“Right, uh. Sorry about that,” Thomas stuttered out. “We’re just—it’s really good to see you okay?”

Out of them all Larry looked to be the most uncomfortable though it was a close race with Manny, Fran was dabbing at her eyes and Ian protested being out in the heat. Newt ached to pick him up and hold him once more, but he was so small, so much smaller than when Newt had seen him last. Did they truly grow that fast?

“Can we maybe go inside now? It’s hot!”

Newt turned to search for the speaker and saw that Dave had come down with them, uncomfortable holding what looked like a spiked staff in his hands.

“Yeah, we can finish this inside. Gotta hear Gally’s story anyway and something tells me it’s not a fun one,” Thomas said.

“Gee, what was your first clue?” Gally muttered. Ben smacked him lightly upside the head before ruffling his lengthening hair.

“How’d ya find us anyway, Gally?” Newt asked. He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes afterwards the sound of the tears still hadn’t faded.

“Drove for awhile looking for the army Thomas said you guys found in the mountains, and then I saw the giant fucking light you shanks shot into the sky and figured if nothing else there’ be people here,” Gally explained. “Sure wasn’t expecting to see your ugly mug standin’ there.”

Bugger.

Newt was acutely aware of the fact that everyone who’d yelled at him _not_ to signal down the Berg had turned to stare at him in vindication, because Gally was flesh proof that anyone could follow it directly to them. Newt shuffled his feet sheepishly before he held his chin high and stood by his choice.

“Worth it,” Newt sniffed.

“Agreed,” said Ben.

“… How about we split the difference and don’t stay here for too much longer?” Minho offered, everyone nodded their agreement and Newt shrugged his consent. He’d much prefer to have a few more days here where he could catch up with Joe and explore his… Tommy.

Er.

His _relationship_ with Tommy.

Newt felt heat flood into his cheeks and looked to his left to see Thomas smirking at him as if he was able to read Newt’s bloody mind.

After a moment taken to prioritize and distance himself from the roiling of a reopened wound long thought sealed, Newt nodded decisively and looked to Thomas to lead the way. Perhaps it was a good thing he’d handed back control, he probably wasn’t in the best state of mind to figure out how they’d need to alter their plans for the millionth-bloody-time that week.

To his surprise and delight, Thomas reached out and took his hand before giving instructions to the others.

“Alright, let’s get inside. Ben? Take Gally to the room we were all in last night so we can figure out what went wrong. Clint do you think you can give the others a once over? I know you’ve never dealt with babies before, but…”

Newt tuned out the instructions in favor of enjoying the gob smacked expression on Gally’s face at seeing Newt and Thomas walk hand in hand. His eyebrows danced together in disbelief and his jaw dropped before he turned to Ben, clearly wanting an explanation.

“We’ve got a lot to catch up on,” was all Ben said.

Bless him.

 

 

Janson.

Of-shucking-course it was that smarmy, greasy, bastard.

Newt should have killed him the moment he’d shown up at that bloody Facility, subtlety and secrecy be _damned_.

Thomas had explained to Gally how they came to be in the desert first, which was a good thing because Newt’s rage was rapidly getting to the point that he’d not be able to focus well for too much longer. How many emotional shifts could he have in one shucking day before he was whacked?

“And then after convincing Manny that I wasn’t making shit up, we all got in the van and started driving. We were actually headed the other direction so without that Flare who knows how long it would have been until we found you?” Gally asked softly, eyes fixed on where his and Ben’s fingers lay intertwined.

Ben held on tightly, eyes intense, as though he’d decided just then that now Gally was back in his sight there wasn’t a chance in hell that he’d allow Gally to leave it once again. The look cut through his anger, and Newt glanced at Thomas where he sat staring at the floor in disbelief.

Newt could agree with Ben’s sentiment; he understood that feeling quite intimately.

“Cranks,” Thomas whispered, and Newt did his best not to flinch. “He fucking set loose Cranks.”

“Were they fighting back?” Newt asked. If they were then it was entirely possible that they’d won but with heavy losses—the city he’d been marched through was quite large, it was entirely possible.

But Gally shook his head.

“He hit with the guns first, remember? Everyone was scrambling. By the time we all realized what else was coming at us… there was barely enough time to run.”

Gally’s face was hunted in a way that made the ghosts clinging to Newt’s skin stir. Gally now had a ghost or two of his own, he had witnessed first hand the harshness of war. The impossibility of the choices available.

The part of yourself you had to lose in order to make the decision to live.

Newt didn’t envy him his newfound education.

“Wasn’t the plan to go through that city?” Zart asked.

“Not like that’s an option anymore,” Minho said. “Can’t go down into a pit of Cranks, man. Not without an army.”

 _An army_.

Something about that struck Newt, reminded him of a thought he’d had what felt like ages ago, when they stormed the entrance to the Facility. He’d thought that the sheer number of Gladers looked like their own veritable army.

Newt quirked an eyebrow and glanced askance at Thomas, who gave a subtle shake of his head. _Not now_ , but they would talk later. Especially if Thomas was planning what Newt had begun to suspect he was planning.

“But the only other option into that place is by air, right?” Frypan asked. “And that’s exactly what he wants us to do!”

Thomas broke his silence, “We’re still waiting on Ava’s play, don’t forget. If we can pit her even more against Janson, then we ought to be able to get something together.”

“It’s a right shame Gally didn’t get struck with you Thomas, it’d be useful if we knew if there were other entrances,” Newt mused. Gally snorted.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he snarked.

“Oh, slim it Gally you know that’s not what I meant,” Newt muttered.

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I wasn’t there long enough this time for them to even give me a complete tour before the world blew up, Luca was just about to give me a radio when the planes flew in.”

Radio.

Wait.

“Tommy—”

“Newt—”

Newt and Thomas chuckled at each other because once again they’d had the same thought.

“No Newt, that’s perfect. You’re right we can have Joe work on the radios like last time, maybe we’ve more help out there than we thought we did,” Thomas said, eyes alight the way they got whenever he started to come up with a plan.

“Are you sure you can’t speak mind to mind?” Rachel demanded.

Newt pulled his gaze from Tommy’s in confusion, “What’re you on about?”

“You two literally said nothing other than each other’s name. That is, nothing else. And you come up with _that_?”

He didn’t know what to say. That he and Thomas had been operating on the same wavelength so long that as this point there wasn’t much they couldn’t figure out about each other? Other than the fact that they’d both been clueless about who loved whom, but that was _decidedly not the point._ With that little hiccup and misunderstanding out of the way there was nothing keeping them from functioning at the top of their game, and things were set to only get better as they got more and more in sync.

“They probably did a little tapping thing and you missed it,” Minho assured her.

“Nope, no tapping, just their names and a ‘significant look’ and Thomas pulls radios out of his ass,” Rachel said, clearly frustrated despite her amusement.

“You guys are being weird again, and I don’t like it. Stop. Stop it right now,” Gally begged.

“What wrong, Gally?” Newt teased. “Not feeling up for a hug?”

Gally groaned and buried his head in on Ben’s shoulders.

“Benny-baby please make it stop or wake me when it’s over,” He whined.

“Don’t worry Gally, the only person Newt’ll be putting his hands on is me,” Thomas said quietly.

That sentence shouldn’t have sent a wave of heat through Newt, shouldn’t have made him sit straighter and look Tommy over from top to toe. Thomas was beet red, blushing as much as Newt, but clearly, he’d decided the only way to avoid copious amounts of teasing from the others was to tease themselves first.

“Is that so? I don’t remember us discussing that bit…” Newt drawled. He also pointedly allowed his eyes to seek out Dan in the crowd, but he had barely made eye contact with the bloke before Tommy smacked him on the shoulder and they both started laughing.

“I miss when they were in denial,” Gally said, voice muffled from Ben’s shoulder.

 

 

The lighthearted banter continued for longer than it probably should have. Newt could have ended it at any time; but watching the groups of very different people begin to mesh together called back memories of a different family in a different life. A large group of people tossed together by circumstance, forged by sand and blood and salt.

They were all family; the others just didn’t know it yet.

“We’ll need a back-up, you realize?” Newt eventually said to Thomas. The room quieted slowly, unwilling to get back to business just yet. “I don’t trust Ava not to turn on us.”

“Ava is the one who kidnapped you all in the first place right? Same dick?” Brenda asked.

“I like her,” Gally said with a nod in her direction. “Why are we relying on her in the first place? I mean I know you told me but what would make things different this time around?”

“The difference is that Tommy is the buggin’ cure and he’s foolishly determined to try and convince Ava that it’s to her advantage to help us,” Newt explained bitterly. “Though how you’re gonna do that without givin’ yourself up is beyond me.”

“It’s worked so far, hasn’t it?” Thomas countered, and Newt had to give him that if nothing else.

“Still. Back-up. If we can’t get access to the tunnels and we can’t go in by sky either that doesn’t leave us a lot of options.”

Thomas bit at his nails while he thought, and Newt had to resist the temptation to pull his hand away from his mouth.

“It’s not that we can’t access the tunnels at all, we just can’t use that one entrance to them” Thomas mused.

Newt tilted his head and waved for Thomas to continue.

“Well, I mean they have the trains running all throughout the city, right? What if there’s a chance to get in that way?”

As an idea it had merit, though from the bits and pieces Newt could remember the trains seemed to be pretty internal to the city itself and didn’t really branch out. If they branched out then they’d be able to slide onto one and ride it on inside, but the only train that had access to the city was—

“You want to ride the same bloody train we robbed before, don’t you?” Newt accused.

Thomas only shrugged in response and newt had to bite back his frustration.

“We don’t even know that the train will run without a bunch of immunes on it being led like pigs to slaughter!” At that statement was when Thomas looked shifty. Newt narrowed his eyes. “Spit it out, Tommy.”

“Well, the train _would_ have immunes on it.”

Newt blinked.

And blinked again.

“But Ava and Janson currently aren’t talking, so why would she be sending him a train load of immunes randomly? That doesn’t make sense, especially since he’d be _expecting_ us to try and rob it.”

“We… wouldn’t be robbing the train. Not exactly.”

Newt blinked.

Comprehension dawned.

Bloody hell.

 

 

 

 

“ _You want us to be the bloody kids on the train?!”_


	19. Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No risk, no gain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Okay I know I've been gone a lot but I'mm planning a wedding, gimme a break. Doing the best I can!

Thomas spent what he felt was an extreme amount of time convincing the others that taking the train to the Last City was only the back up plan. He’d been questioned at ever turn and it seemed like each answer he gave only resulted in more groans and upset than the last.

It was infuriating.

In a way he could understand the masses not fully trusting him with pulling off crazy shit because this group hadn’t survived through a lot of it with him; although, he did notice that the group of Gladers who’d tracked down Newt’s group with Thomas wasn’t protesting quite as much as everyone else was. It did little to balm the irritation he felt towards the room at large. Finally, he snapped,

“Yeah, well I don’t see anyone else coming up with new ideas or plans! If all you can do is make a bunch of noise and criticize instead of coming up with anything _helpful_ then you can all just fuckin’ slim it!”

There was a few beats of silence after his outburst, during which everyone sort of looked at each other, every person looking at the next to be the one to come up with something.

Unsurprisingly, no one said a word. Not even Newt.

“There, see?” Thomas sighed and ruffled his hands through his hair, which was getting longer than he liked. He wondered in Fran would mind cutting it for him. “Now just… stop yelling at me alright? You’re starting to give me a headache.”

There was a bubble of nervous laughter from Clint, who’d had front row seats to the last time Thomas had the beginnings of a headache. Luckily for the squeamish there wasn’t anyone nearby that Thomas felt like shooting—not even Gally.

Newt finally cleared his throat, and Thomas looked at him in expectation.

“Alright, ya’ve made your point. But if that bit of madness is Plan B…” Newt trailed off meaningfully, clearly hoping Thomas would pick up the sentence with an explanation. When he didn’t, Newt soldiered on. “Then what, pray tell, is Plan A?”

Thomas bit his lip and scuffed his foot along the ground.

Silence.

A sigh.

“Scale of one to ten, Tommy, how much am I goin’ to hate this little plan of yours?” Newt asked. Thomas’s gaze flicked up to his eyes and saw the note of humor hidden within—Newt had asked almost the same exact thing back in the Glade, when they were plotting their escape. The bit of humor helped to ease the tension between his shoulders, though not by much.

“You… don’t want the answer to that,” Thomas answered honestly.

Newt’s eyes, along with all present Keepers, widened almost comically given the fact that Thomas had previously had no qualms telling Newt that it was an 85 on that very same scale.

“Shit,” Frypan whispered.

Thomas gave a little half shrug in response, though he made no move to explain himself. He had no more details to give, not until he’d made contact with Ava and knew how things stood, so there was no point in continuing on with the subject. For all he knew, Ava would try to keep Thomas waiting in one of her ill-advised and horribly-timed attempts at a power move and they’d be forced to act without her in play at all.

Thomas was perilously close to being out of moves, and the stakes of the game were too high to have such a small number of players on the board.

“Good that then, lads. Let’s pack it in and get on with something productive. No sense in letting our imaginations run away with themselves—if you’re not cleanin’, you’re trainin’. Hop to it!” Newt called out. Within moments, and among many grumbles, the room had cleared save for Thomas, Minho, and Newt.

The three of them together, just them, sent a rush of warmth and calm throughout his fingertips. Even with the altered dynamic between them it felt _right_. How long had they worked for this? To get here? Timelines blurred, and Thomas was having a difficult time keeping everything nice and organized but he knew that this was a moment that felt important. That felt like the tides turning in their favor, for once.

What couldn’t the three of them handle?

“So, is this the part where I get to call bullshit and demand answers? Because _shit_ do I need some answers here,” Minho asked, faux-casual.

“You’re after me, mate,” Newt said. He crossed his arms and leaned again the rough wooden counter and fixed Thomas with a stare that saw too damn much. “’Cause I want a touch more insight on this little army Tommy’s tryin’ ta build.”

Yep.

Saw way too much.

Thomas deliberately didn’t say a word; not a confirmation, not a denial. All he had at this point was a bunch of vague ideas, images that kept playing out in his head. It wasn’t nearly enough to go on, he knew that, but Thomas had always seen the world a bit differently than others had. It was as if everyone and everything was connected by strings, strings that led to the culmination of different events. If one tugged the right strings in the right combination… you never knew what you might end up with.

So Thomas tugged.

On everything.

He tugged until his fingers bled, opening up every door he could find in the hopes that from within their depths would come the big picture, what he saw every night when he closed his eyes.

Nothing to go on completely, not by a long shot, but something to build off of.

“An army? We’re a bunch of scrawny kids and a couple of adults who’ve no real idea what they’ve gotten themselves into,” Minho protested.

“That’s not what I see,” Thomas mumbled, a bit stung on the behalf of everyone. “I know what we can become, if pushed in the right direction. So does Newt.”

“So that’s what you’re doin’ then? Pushin’?”

“I’m not sure I know enough of which direction we should be going in to push, really. I’m more… keeping ‘push’ options open, if that makes sense?”

“It doesn’t,” Minho shook his head. “You two are speaking in code and I hate it. Use real words, please. I can’t help if I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.”

“Learning, mainly. Everything you can. Fighting, weapons, everything that anyone has to offer,” Thomas began.

“Probably wouldn’t hurt to learn more medicine from Harriet, honestly. We’ve only got Clint and Fran right now and she’s gonna be all tied up with Ian,” Newt added.

It was true, with Jeff taken they’d effectively cut their medical knowledge and ability to shreds.

“Harriet and Clint were putting their heads together last night after you two vanished to make doe eyes at each other, so that’s already moving in the right direction,” Minho said.

“Good, so now we wait,” Thomas said.

Newt and Minho looked at him blankly.

“Wait, you meant that?” Minho asked.

Thomas squinted at him in confusion, of course he’d meant it, he didn’t just talk to hear himself speak. “Not everything is a crazy plan all the time. This shit has a _lot_ of waiting involved with it, just be glad that we have concrete deadlines and aren’t aimlessly wandering sand dunes hoping for a clue.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but the mood tipped between the three of them, edging towards tense and somber with the reminder of their deadline.

“Two weeks,” Minho whistled. “Think we can pull it off?”

Newt and Thomas shared a loaded look between them, one that said a lot of what couldn’t really be put together in words.

Together they shrugged, “We’ve managed worse.”

 

 

 

Newt went off in search of Joe to beg his help with radios and to possibly offer him more of an explanation than whatever it was Gally had offered, which couldn’t have been much. Thomas was honestly surprised and impressed that Gally’d managed as well as he had with the scant number of details Thomas had given him forever ago.

Either Thomas was better at describing things than he thought he was, or Gally possessed an insane ability to make inferences to fill in gaps of information.

He’d have to have a conversation with him later; Ben would more than likely be monopolizing Gally’s time for much of the near future.

“So now we’re, what? Going off on our own to brood?”

Thomas couldn’t remember Minho ever asking this many questions; though he supposed this was better than Minho yelling that he was insane every five shucking minutes.

“We’re gonna go check in with Rianne and Aris, see how things are going with the kids we left behind,” Thomas explained, for the third time.

“And we’re doing this because we don’t trust Ava?”

“Correct.”

“We don’t trust her, and yet you’re trying to ally with her.”

Thomas stopped walking and fixed Minho with a look. Minho chuckled and raised his arms in defeat, “Hey Greenie, I’m just trying to make sure I’ve got all the facts. Whatever conclusions you draw from that are your own.”

Thomas sighed and resumed walking.

“I know it doesn’t make much sense, but it’s our best play. Last time so much could have gone differently if we’d just had more people and more resources; if working with Ava can give us those things then that’s a chance we’ve got to take.”

Minho was silent for a few moments before he nodded, “I can get with that, as long as you’re aware that it doesn’t make sense to work with someone you couldn’t trust.”

“There was a long period of time when the only people I trusted were you and Newt,” Thomas said. “Sometimes you just don’t have a choice.”

Minho nodded, once.

They entered the Berg and moved directly towards the communication terminal, Dan gave his report on the great load of nothing that had happened since the call from Janson. Thomas had been hoping for something from Ava before now her continued silence made his shoulder blades twitch, like he should be preparing for an attack to come from any direction at any moment.

Still lost in thought, Thomas motioned for Dan to instigate a call to Rianne.

What if Ava figured it all out without needing answers? What if she’d decided that Thomas was the cure, the answer to everything? What if she decided that she could do it all much easier without Thomas’s cooperation?

The call screen blipped into place in front of him, holograph taking its sweet time to focus.

… What if she intercepted their call to Rianne and was staring Thomas directly in the face.

Well then.

“Now I know I never met this Rianne chick, but something tells me that she’s not Ava’s twin,” Minho drawled. “Unless she decided to get the worst possible makeover.”

He wanted to laugh, he really did, but he needed Ava to work with him even more. He’d laugh later when he relayed the joke to Newt.

Newt—he’d be pissed that he wasn’t there for the phone call, but it wasn’t as though Thomas purposely came to have a conversation with Ava without him, she’d just appeared.

Newt would understand.

Maybe.

“I’m pleased to see that you’ve located your friends,” Ava drawled, with a dismissive glance towards Minho and a slight sneer on her lips.

“Charming as ever, Dr. Paige,” Minho said, complete with a sweeping fake bow and a roll of his eyes.

Thomas kicked him lightly in the shin, _this was not the time_. Minho might not have been Newt, but he got the picture.

“May I ask why you’ve intercepted my call?” Thomas asked. He wanted to have control over where this conversation went—too much could go wrong with Ava at the reins.

“Rianne is a bit busy at the moment,” Ava said.

Thomas’s blood ran cold and red flashed in front of his eyes, “ _What have you done to her_.”

It was Ava’s turn to roll her eyes; she gestured at someone off of the camera and suddenly Thomas was being shown camera footage of the room with all of the kids in a coma. Except… not all of them were. There was Dr. Clyde, moving steadily from one bed to the next, administering something to their IV’s that had their vitals start going off the charts. Following behind Dr. Clyde were medical doctors who worked to bring the person around and checking them over.

Half of them were being helped to sit already—Thomas saw Rianne rushing swiftly from bed to bed, talking, hugging, reassuring. He remembered that most of her Maze had been put under already, those were her sisters she was reuniting with.

Abruptly the screen switched back to Ava and Thomas had to blink a few times to hold back the emotions he felt—it had been possible to bring them back the whole time, Wicked had just never bothered. Instead they’d slaughtered them all and Thomas had been too busy caught up in everything else to care.

“How?” he croaked.

Ava smiled, and if he didn’t know any better he might have thought she’d meant it. She took long enough to answer that Thomas almost asked her again, but, “The problem we’d faced before was bringing them back from the…. Images… they’re faced with and not driving them to madness in the process. We could do it with those we never fully put under, but not those who were under permanently.”

She paused for a moment and pointlessly reshuffled the pages on her desk, “It was Rianne who came up with the solution, she’s… very bright. She suggested that instead of pulling them directly from a nightmare, you changed the images. Transition them slowly to pleasant dreams and then wake them up as though they’d had an unnaturally long rest. We took that suggestion and combined it with standard coma medicines and, well. You saw the results.”

Thomas squinted and jiggled his leg up and down, debating over the obvious question and if he was truly going to ask it.

He caved.

“Who is she?” Thomas asked. “Rianne. She’s not just another one of us tossed into a Maze, is she?”

Ava cleared her throat and looked off screen for a long moment before she deigned to reply.

“I tell you this because I believe it will help with the situation we have found ourselves in, and for the benefit of us both.” She took a deep breath and continued. “I’m not sure what all you learned in the future, about how things worked out, but I bet you’ve had questions. How there was this magical Safe Haven where you wouldn’t be chased, stocked with supplies and already growing crops. How some people knew where it was, and how to get there. How a company claiming to want to save the world was potentially murdering the only people guaranteed to survive the new climate.”

In her pause, Thomas realized that he had actually had those questions, but was always too preoccupied to voice them. Strung out all together it didn’t make sense, none of it. An uneasy feeling churned in his gut as Ava continued.

“It was my backup plan, in case things went wrong. In case the research didn’t pan out, if we ran out of time. We set it up, but never advertised it. We weren’t going to advertise it until it was absolutely necessary—in which case we would transport all remaining immunes and those who weren’t sick to the Safe Haven and help them start anew.”

Holy shit.

“Things were all going to plan, my partner and I moved things around effortlessly without the knowledge being leaked to the others on the council. They… wouldn’t have understood,” Ava whispered. Her face turned sad and downcast as she spoke, and Thomas couldn’t have interrupted her if he’d tried. “They were firmly of the belief that every single immune should be put through the program, be tested. Because any one of them might have held the answers we so desperately needed. So when they found out that my partners daughter was immune… they took her. And threw her into the Maze Trials. I couldn’t stop it, though my partner tried to do so in vain. If I had spoken up I would have endangered everything, my research, the Safe Haven—there would be no plan other than the Trials. That was not a risk I could take.”

Wheels started spinning in Thomas’s brain, connecting the dots like rapid fire, answering questions that had long gone unanswered because they hadn’t been relevant at the time.

“My partner left, started a resistance against us, and took her knowledge of the Safe Haven with her… they only gift I was capable of giving her daughter was her new name, one that closely resembled her mother’s.”

Rianne.

Marianne.

 _Mary_.

Rianne was Mary’s daughter, and Ava claimed that she had a hand in setting up the Safe Haven, that is was always meant to be plan B. That’s where Thomas has seen the ability to get under Ava’s skin so easily, Rianne got that talent from her mother. He wanted to scream, wanted to freak out, but he couldn’t. There wasn’t time.

“You said that all of this had a factor in our situation, how do you mean?” Thomas asked.

“You’re the cure,” Ava said with a cold finality.

“So?” Thomas challenged, though his heart beat wildly in his chest. That assuaged his worry that he hadn’t yet been the cure when he’d injected it into Newt, that he hadn’t been under enough stress yet to do anything worthwhile.

“With that small sample alone we cured fifteen test subjects, that’s not an insignificant number, Thomas,” Ava chided, but Thomas was no longer listening.

“ _Fifteen_?” Thomas gasped. “That’s impossible, okay, that dose should have barely been enough for one, let alone fifteen.”

Ava tilted her head and tapped her nails against her desk in confusion, “I assure you that it is, Thomas. The enzyme provided int his sample is almost unnaturally potent compared to every other sample we’ve retrieved. Which is why I’m here to renegotiate with you,” Ava explained.

Thomas said nothing, stuck in shock, so she continued.

“Allow us to take more samples, see if we can figure out just why your enzyme is so strong, and I’ll help you get the others back. All of them. We’ll send whoever you want sent on to the Safe Haven and provide you every resource I have at my disposal to retrieve the others from Janson.”

“That’s an awful lot to offer for a few samples of Thomas’s blood,” Minho challenged.

Ava looked his way and raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, “That’s the only price he will accept for allowing himself back within my reach.”

“And after?” Thomas finally forced out of the haze of his shock and disbelief. “What happens after we get them all back?”

There was a beat of time where Thomas and Ava stared at each other, a moment passed that Thomas had no way to explain it to Minho when he asked about it later.

“That would be negotiated after you have you friends Thomas,” Ava said, and already Thomas knew what his answer would be. “I do not wish to be you enemy.”

“Thomas, you can’t be serious, you need to talk to Newt he will _kill_ you,” Minho started, but Thomas interrupted him.

“We don’t tell him the details, not yet, leave that bit to me,” Thomas ordered, and though Minho wanted to fight it, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Do we have a bargain?” Ava asked.

“We do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. So. Ava and Mary and Rianne. For those of you who've both read the books and watched the movies, you know they've changed a lot. 
> 
> 1\. Mary didn't exist in the books.
> 
> 2\. Ava truly was the one responsible for the existence of the Safe Haven and how people got there.
> 
> So this got me thinking, for me to merge the world I had to create a scenario in which Mary would still leave Wicked, despite knowing that a Safe Haven existed for these kids, that murdering them all in tests wasn't the only plan. So then THAT got me thinking about how the Right Arm took the information Thomas gave them and went after a female maze first, and so the idea of Rianne was born. A way to stay true to both characters and merge the story--giving Mary a different line that she couldn't cross, she couldn't watch her own daughter go through it, not when she knew there was another way.
> 
> Hope you're all okay with that!


	20. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> End.

WICKED Memorandum, Date 232.2.03, Time 19:32

TO: Associates of WICKED and Global Allies

FROM: Ava Paige, Chancellor

RE: WICKED is Good

 

 

This message is in response to recent developments and findings of a most extraordinary measure—namely, the tangible possibility of a cure. Due to extenuating circumstances beyond out current comprehension a workable cure has, at long last, been found. It was not created or cultivated as a result of our Trials or studies; rather, it appears to be the possibility of a second chance gifted to us by the universe itself.

Since it’s discovery we have cured fifteen test subjects with zero side effects, all with either Stage One or Two of the Flare. We have yet to attempt the cure on a subject who has passed the Gone, however that will be our next test as soon as more of the substance is made available to us.

Which brings me to the point of this message.

Above all, what has allowed us to stand tall and strong amid impossible decisions and consistent failures is the simple fact that WICKED is Good. Our aim has always been and will always be to ensure the continued existence of the human race… no matter the cost.

It has been made apparent that there are those who wish to take what limited supplies we have for the cure and use it not for the benefit of all, but for the benefit of a few. To play God, to choose who lives and who dies, to remake society in their own image.

This will not be tolerated.

As of this moment and moving forward, former Assistant Director Eric Janson is ex-communicated and hereby an enemy of the state, the government, and humanity as a whole. All those who would choose to follow him will find themselves cut off from all resources and help moving forward.

You are either with us, with humanity, or against us.

The choice is yours.

 

 

 

**END OF BOOK TWO**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD WE DID IT
> 
> The love and support you all give me every day is what keeps me going, I'm so glad you've all given me this chance and have let my story be part of your lives.
> 
> Let's keep it going, shall we? The next part has already been posted.


End file.
